Forget Me Not
by MonstersInside
Summary: 13x15 based on episode spoilers I had a go at writing this. Sara is found unconscious in a hotel room next door to a dead man. As the investigation proceeds the evidence against Sara stacks up as it comes to light that not only was she in his hotel room, but she was in his bed. Sara's life begins spiralling out of control when her potential motive for the murder comes to light.
1. Key Cards and Key Chains

**Chapter 1**

Key Cards and Key Chains

"Taylor! Taylor, I swear to _God _if you don't open this damned door!"

"Listen sweetheart, 'Taylor's' not answering right now so why don't you do the world and their eardrums a favour and come back at a more acceptable time?" An irritated neighbour yelled across the corridor, the hangover he was nursing finally losing patience with the young woman who had been hammering on the door of room 3268 for almost ten, continuous minutes.

Cursing under her breath she turned her back on the door and marched down to the hotel's reception area where she cornered one of the younger members of the unsuspecting staff and snarled,

"Listen you, I need to get in to room 3268 and I need to get in now."

"I'm sorry man I don't think-" He began nervously before being interrupted,

"That's good, I don't need you to think I just need you to _do_."

"I really don't think there's anything I can do-"

"Look, he's my brother, Taylor Wynard, my plane's supposed to leave in two hours and, for some unbeknownst reason, I need him to get on it with me, I need you to waken sleeping beauty now."

"I, I understand Miss, but it's your brothers room I-"

"Look, if it helps I have a key card, but the damn reader, much like a lot of other things in this hotel, won't do its job and won't read the card!" she said, producing a key card with the room number she had described printed on it.

The young receptionist now looked as though he was in grave danger of bursting into flames before her as he took the card from her as though it was his death warrant and stuttered, "Of, of course Madam...Let, let me see what I can do..."

"Thank you." She said, more gently, feeling guilty for taking out, both her pent up frustration with her brother and her still burning anger of the drunken neighbour out on the poor young receptionist.

"What's your name?" she asked, kindly as they walked upstairs.

"Jason." He whispered, as though afraid she would proclaim it a bad name and demand that he change it.

"Well thank you Jason, and I'm sorry for my earlier behaviour, it was uncalled for, it's not your fault that my brother is a useless, lazy son-of-a...Well I apologise in any case." She said, attempting to reassure him as he staggered up the stairs.

"OK, room 3268, let's see if my key card works..." he said, feeling a little more at ease after her apology, it took him a few attempts but eventually the door granted them access.

"Thank God, "she muttered, pushing past him and hurrying into the room, grabbing various clothes from their 'artful' positions strewn across the floor, a breadcrumb trail to the bedroom, "Taylor! Taylor when we get back I'm disowning you and adopting someone who isn't a useless, lazy, arrogant basta-" she broke off as she caught site of the man sprawled across the floor, a large blood-red rose blossoming in the centre of his chest, "And isn't dead." She breathed before falling in a cold faint beside him, leaving poor Jason to deal with both of them.

...

"Have you heard anything from the others?" Nick asked Russell as they clambered out of the car.

"Morgan and Greg are en route, Finn's just pulled a double she demanded a shower before coming, and it's Sara's day off, she took the week so I presume she's at Casa Grissom, though I left her a message."

Nick nodded as they made their way into the hotel, kits in hand, "What exactly is this?"

"War of the roses. " Russell smiled,

"Eh?"

"Woman called went into her brother's room in the hotel to find that the flight ticket he had booked had suddenly become one way, she fainted and the receptionist managed to call it in."

"And the 'war of the roses'?"

"Oh well I just thought, her name was rose and there are petals all over the bedroom..." he broke off as Nick continued to stare at him, "I've had a very long day Nick."

"And yet it's barely seven in the morning."

"Yeah, go figure..."

They made their way up to room 3268 and, to their amazement found David already with the body in the bedroom while Brass interviewed two, extremely pale people, one a woman, presumably the sister, and the other a terrified looking receptionist who had supposedly called it in.

"Hey David." Nick muttered, crouching down beside the body.

"Morning." The coroner replied, "Meet Taylor Wynard, bullet to the chest, through and through so it's still here somewhere. 35, from Florida."

"Thank you David." Russell murmured.

They took several pictures, nothing exceptional to point out except several thin purple fibres under his nails that they collected for trace, before releasing the body to David.

"OK, why don't we divide and conquer the bedroom and then when Brass is finished we'll talk to the twin Casper's in there."

Nick agreed and immediately moved to the table and photographed the two wine glasses, "One of these glasses is wearing lipstick, the other doesn't, safe to say he has company?" Nick said, "He had company?"

"I'd say that's a fair bet."

"Why don't you see how fair?" Nick smirked, jerking his head at the bed and making an unnecessary fuss of swabbing and bagging the wine glasses.

"Oh, yeah, someone got lucky last night." Russell smirked, throwing back the covers and allowing the ALS to work its magic. "Looks like these sheets are fresh, which is a good thing for us, we only have our victim and his lady friend."

"So what, is this looking like death by affair again? Wife or girlfriend suspects something, or just comes up to surprise him, enters the bedroom and finds him with the other woman and kills him in a rage?"

"OK then, what happened to the other woman?"

"Made her excuses and left?"

"If you came in and find your spouse in bed and you're mad enough to kill them would you just let the other person 'make their excuses and leave'?" Russell asked,

"No, no probably not."

"Definitely not...And besides, guns aren't just lying around hotel rooms, that implies premeditation, death by affair is usually opportunistic, like that large, clobber-y looking lamp there by the bed."

"Clobber-y?" Nick repeated, mercilessly, "How much coffee have you had this morning?"

"Nowhere near enough Nicky, nowhere near enough..."

"OK then, my theories out the window, what's yours?"

"Well I'm sure I don't know Nick...Perhaps it was just the other woman, maybe she whacked him."

"Why?"

"...No idea, good point."

"It doesn't look like there was much of a struggle, everything in this room looked perfect...Apart from the dead body in it. Point is, if it had been the other woman he would have fought back when she suddenly pulled a gun on him, maybe she was in here previously, left and then the killer came back, which puts my death by affair back into the picture."

"How do you figure that?"

"Well, wife or girlfriend comes back, catches him in bed, sneaks out gets herself again, comes back while he's passed out from drink and partying with the other woman and she shoots him."

"I could buy that..." Russell said, before adding "Or it could have nothing to do with sex and it's something completely unrelated, like a robbery gone wrong."

"How long have you worked here now? It's never not about sex in a Vegas hotel." Nick smirked.

Russell grinned back, "You may have a point there..."

At that point Brass sauntered in, "Would you like to interview our witnesses?" he asked,

"Yes." They replied in unison.

"Miss Wynard, the victim was your brother correct?" Russell asked, gently,

"Yes, we were supposed to go home and see our parents today...God I haven't told them yet I, we're supposed to be on the plane and-"

"That's alright miss Wynard, we can take care of that for you in a moment, for now, can you think of any reason someone would want to do this to him?"

"I, no" she said, the receptionist choked and widened his eyes

"You think differently Mr..."

"Erm Jenkins, Jason, no, no I've never met him before she just erm..."

"Yes?"

"Wasn't very complimentary..." he muttered,

"Miss Wynard?"

"OK, yes I'll admit it, Taylor was a lazy bastard who got where he was with his looks, his charm and a little bit of luck, and yes he had a temper and he was a pain in the ass, and rubbed people up the wrong way but no-one would want to _kill_ him!" she protested.

"Yes, with traits like that it's hard to see why anyone would dream of it." Brass muttered,

"OK, I get it, but you don't understand...He's one of those people you can't stay mad with, he'll be screwing your sister but then you'll turn round and give him the keys to your car so he can take her to the cinema, that's just the kind of guy he was like, I can't think of anyone who would..." she broke off, crying.

"Alright Miss Wynard, not much more I promise. Was Taylor seeing anyone? Wife girlfriend?"

She spluttered in an attempt to contain suddenly hysterical laughter, "Wife? Girlfriend? Taylor? No way, he'd run a mile if I asked him to commit to going into town with him...Hookers were invented for Taylor."

"OK, thank you Miss Wynard...What about you Jason. What did you see?"

"Not, not much...I just opened the door, her key card wasn't working, then I saw him and I called the police, I'd never met him before..."

"OK, thanks Jason."

They turned away momentarily "Well there goes the death by affair, and our eye witnesses." Nick muttered,

"What about an_ ear _witness?" Russell asked, "Guns are loud, someone must have heard something, maybe just thought it was the TV at the time."

"Jason, do you know if there's anyone in these rooms opposite?" Russell asked,

"I don't think there's anyone to the left but there's a woman on the left, I checked her in earlier...Do you think she might have heard something?" he asked,

"Maybe, do you think she might have?"

"If she was in her room then yeah, these walls are like paper, you can hear people _breathe _through them, never mind a bullet."

"OK then, let's go and see what she heard." Russell said, moving out into the corridor with Nick, Brass and Jason in tow.

Russell knocked quietly, "Miss, hello, Miss? LVPD, could we speak to you for a moment?"

Silence.

"Are you sure Jason?"

"Yeah, quite sure, and she hasn't left the room either."

"How do you know?"

"Well I saw her down at the bar earlier, she was drinking with the dead guy next door and-"

"And you _didn't _think this was important?" Brass squawked.

"Well, I don't know...I suppose it was." Jason flushed,

"Anyway, I've been downstairs all evening, she hasn't left the hotel I swear it." He said, trying to make ammeds.

"OK Jason, can you let us in there please?" Brass said, drawing his gun

"Based on what?" Russell hissed

"Based on the fact that if she's not dead she's guilty, every man and his dog on this floor is out goggling at us, what is she hiding?"

Jason obliged and hastily swiped the key card, Brass then pushed the door open and entered, the two CSIs behind him.

A woman was sprawled on the cream carpet, her thick dark hair obscuring her face.

"God." Brass muttered, stowing his gun and bending down to check for a pulse.

As he did so, he moved the hair away from her face, all three of them stared in shock, "Sara." Brass muttered,

"Brass, is she OK?" Nick demanded, gazing down at her in horror.

A/N: Based on the spoilers and the all-round awesomeness of this episode, I decided to put my own spin on it, since I can't wait until it actually airs :) Please review if you have a minute.

A/N2: I apologise for the astonishing lack of updates to my other stories, my mind has quite literally hit a brick wall with them, I'm hoping that my getting creative with this piece will help but in the meantime my writer's block apologises.


	2. Nightmares

**Chapter 2**

Nightmare

When Sara's eyes flickered open the first thing she became painfully aware of was the horribly familiar itch of the cheap cotton nightgown telling her, in no uncertain terms, that she was in a hospital.

She closed her eyes again; loathe to be confronted with this uncomfortable truth. She hated hospitals. It seemed fairly obvious since most of her childhood had been spent in them in some capacity; either she was occupying the bed as a patient or as the visitor of a patient. Both of them victims of the same time, and every time the one who put them there was with them, holding her hand, telling her she was a 'very brave girl' and that he was proud of her. He swore 'it' would never happen again. She had believed him every time. At first by choice, and then she started forcing herself, unable to contemplate the alternative, she had trusted him, until she had been unable to trust anyone. Still it was not only her overuse of them that made her uncomfortable in hospitals, although it was tied in to it. She didn't like to admit it, even to herself, but she was a control freak. Her colleagues had teased her for years over her reluctance to allow them to drive her anywhere, her instincts always fought for control, wherever possible, and in a hospital it was never possible. Everything was done for her, she was told when and what to do, nothing was solely her choice, not that they would ever give her all of the information necessary to make an informed one. Nowhere else on the planet was information withheld on a 'need to know' basis when what that information concerned was the person who, evidently, did not need to know.

Her head ached, but not, she was sure, from alcohol alone...Or maybe it was, this felt like the hangover from Hell and she was struggling to remember anything from the night before. She sighed and ran her hands through her hair, as far as high IV would permit and forced her eyes open again.

The sight she was met this made her close them again. Nick was pacing anxiously outside, speaking in a low voice on the phone. How the Hell was she supposed to talk to Nick, she couldn't even tell _herself _what had happened never mind Nick. What _had _happened?

She was exhausted and found herself slipping back in to sleep that was more than acceptable to her, she could not deal with Nick. Not yet. However she soon discovered that the powers that be residing in her head had decided that she had done _something _wrong and that she deserved to be punished for it.

_A shot glass full of clear liquid was sitting on the polished, oak bar in front of her. She was fairly sure that it was vodka and she was very sure that she should not be drinking it. Nevertheless, as they so often did when alcohol was concerned, her trembling fingers did not wait from permission from the rest of her and reached out to take the glass. As she did a small red drop appeared in the centre of the glass. _

_She set it back down on the bar, watching it curiously. The red drop began to diffuse out, corrupting the clear liquid, the long thin tendrils of crimson weaving their way through the pure liquid like clawing fingers. She watched as the red became thicker and denser, easily overpowering the colourless alcohol, poisoning it until she was left with a cup of pure red liquid, innocently daring her to drink it. She refused. _

_On the surface of the glass the top layer of liquid solidified into a smooth, silky layer. She watched it curiously as it rose up from the glass floating just over the liquid below it. She suddenly felt herself falling as though the world had been pulled out from underneath her; she landed on soft silken sheets but flinched as the glass hovered over her, its contents emptying onto her. _

_Expecting a burning hot liquid she was surprised when a cascade of rose petals descended upon her, falling around her like scarlet snow. _

_A face swam before her, impossible to make out who it belonged to, its features blurred and distorted. In contrast to this were the lips. Plum, sensual an inviting. Very inviting, and without disappointment. Sweet, with a hint of citrus, gentle, encouraging. Her wedding ring tightened around her finger as the heart inside her chest fluttered in panic._

_The red rose petals were condensing once more, into a thick liquid, unmistakeable as blood. The blood that she was now drowning in. A cold, cruel laughter filled her ears, reverberating painfully around the inside of her skull. She clamped her hands over them and screamed. A loud gunshot ricocheted through her tormented mind killing the sound _and her dream as she bolted upright, shaking, sweating and screaming.

Nick was by her side, gently prising her hands away from her ears and holding her close to him, rocking her backwards and forwards while telling her that she was alright, as he stroked her hair. Nick was a constant in her life, always there, always reassuring but at that moment in time she felt repulsed by him and pushed him away. He did not question her and released her immediately.

"I'm sorry." She gasped, chest heaving as she tried to regain control of herself.

"It's alright Sara, it's OK." He told her quietly, but she knew he was lying. It was not OK, he was hurt that she had pushed him away, she could see it in his eyes, but there was something else, something he was trying to hide from her and that terrified her more than anything that had happened up to this point.

Suddenly she wanted him back, she wanted him to hold her and tell her that she was alright, that nothing was really that wrong. That she had misread signs she had been learning to read for thirteen years. But she didn't want Nick to hold her, she wanted Grissom. She wanted her husband, her husband to tell her that everything was OK, because he was the only one she would believe. He would tell her the truth, however horrific, regardless of how little she wanted to hear it. Nick could only stand in solemn silence, leaving her to panic over what the Hell was happening. She needed answers. She needed answers now...

A/N: I'm not really sure how I feel about this. I wanted a different way to show what had happened before hand without giving too much away but it feels a little too fanciful for CSI and a little too fanciful for me to be honest, so I'm not too sure if it worked. Let me know what you thought, you like, I keep, it doesn't work, tell me and I'll change it :)


	3. Romantic Relations

**Chapter 3**

Romantic Relations

"Nick. What the Hell is going on?"

"How, how much do you remember?" he asked evasively.

"I'm having a bad day Nick, I drank...A lot." She said, equally vague. He did not need to hear about her insecurities in hospitals or about mysterious bullets running through her dreams.

"OK, OK...We found you in a hotel room, passed out..."

"OK Nick, so far that doesn't seem to warrant you standing at the bottom of my bed acting like someone's died."

He blanched and said, "Sara."

"Oh God." She breathed, hands coming up to meet her mouth. "Who?"

"A man named Taylor Wynard; he was in the room next to yours."

"God..."

"Sara, I know this is hard but, do you remember anything?"

She thought of the gunshot in her dreams, and, more sickeningly, of the inviting citrus lips, "No." She said quietly.

"OK, OK, Sara listen...They, someone saw you going into his hotel room."

"Well, if they're right next door how can they be sure it wasn't mine?" she countered, trying to convince him as much as herself.

"You went in with him."

"God Nick...I wouldn't...If you think."

"No, you're not a murderer Sara."

"No, but I am a cheat. That's what you think isn't it?" she snarled, tears in her eyes not sure what she was more hurt by, the fact that he thought it could be true or the fact that she thought it could.

"Sara I-"

"Get out Nick." She said in a deadly whisper.

"Sara." He began, pleadingly.

"No, get out, get out now Nick!" she screamed, as something snapped inside her and tears streamed down her face.

"Sara, no." He said, his voicing cracking as he stepped towards her and attempted to hold her in his arms again,

"No, no don't you dare touch me! You get out, you get out now!" She shrieked, pulling away from him and tearing out her IV line in the process.

Realising that he was doing more harm than good he obliged, backing slowly out of the room, hands raised in a gesture of surrender, "OK, OK I'll go, on one condition, you promise me that you call me, anytime about anything."

"Go, please go." She choked, barely listening.

"You swear to me Sara Sidle." He said, shaking in an effort to keep his emotions in check. "

"I swear." She managed to croak as he backed from the room.

She slumped back on her pillows, falling to pieces now as her entire body shook, rebelling against what he had told her. _Cheat. Whore. Slut. Murderer! _

...

She was discharged a few hours later and had barely taken her first breath of clear air, untainted by bleach, when she was arrested.

"Sara." A curt voice said behind her.

"Jim." He pulled her into a tight hug.

"You need to come with me, to PD, for an interview."

"You can't be serious." She whispered, her throat feeling as though she had spent a week out in the Mojave.

"I'm sorry Sara...I volunteered to come and get you, please don't make this harder than it has to-"

"Harder than it has to." She breathed in a hollow whisper, "You're arresting me and you think this can get any harder?"

"I'm not arresting you; we just want to ask you a few questions."

"Ask away." She spat.

"Sara please..." he began.

"Fine then, let's go." She said before adding coldly, "You're cheaper than a taxi..."

...

She had been led to an interrogation room, handed a small cup of steaming hot tea and been left to stew in one of the interrogation rooms wondering how the Hell it had come to _this._

The door was pushed open and an official man in a suit who would have looked more comfortable inspecting her house than the inside of an interview room. He had greying hair and intelligent, piercing dark green eyes that found the fear in her large brown ones with supreme ease.

"Who are you?" she asked, flatly, long hard lessons had made her paranoid and suspicious of any unknown quantity. If this officious bastard thought he was going to get more out of her than Nick then he was sorely mistaken, she would make sure of that.

"Detective Crawford...They wanted someone without any _emotional _attachment." He said by way of introduction and explanation.

"Well you tell them they've done a very good job, you're about as emotional as the chewing gum on the underside of this desk." She shot back, her defence mechanisms, unwisely, kicking in.

"I'll pass that on." He said, mockingly making a note of her comment, "Now, tell me, what do you know about this unfortunate business with Mr. Wynard."

She leaned forwards and hissed, "Don't play games with me, I know the way this works, what have you got?"

"What makes you think we've _got_ anything?" he sneered.

"What makes you think I have about as much intelligence as you have feelings?" she snapped, "If you just wanted to know what I could remember I wouldn't be talking to you for a start, I wouldn't be in an interview room and I would have something that the FDA might consider approving as safe for human consumption." She said, jerking her head towards her tea.

"Damn, she's got balls." Finn muttered approvingly to Russell, "And here I thought she was so calm and collected..."

"Jesus Sara." Nick breathed, knowing full well that Sara was _not _calm and collected, it took a considerable amount of pressure these days but eventually the cracks that always been there would break.

Finn, Nick, Russell and Brass were watching the interview behind the two-way glass and, for most of them, through their fingers.

"Alright." Crawford said, through gritted teeth, it usually took a lot but she was getting right under his skin and she knew it.

He spread several pictures on the table, some graphic shots from the crime scene and some grainy CCTV pictures that showed her entering the room.

"That _is _you Ms Sidle?" he said coldly.

"No, did they forget to mention I had a twin sister roaming around Vegas casually murdering random men in hotels."

"He doesn't look like a random man to me Ms Sidle, it looks that the two of you were quite close."

"Oh and you can tell that from the exceptional quality of these pictures?" she spat back.

"You don't strike me as the kind of woman who enters hotel rooms with strange men she picks up at bars."

"No, is that because I strike you as a married woman?"

"No it's because you strike me as an unhappily married woman."

"This is beginning to feel like an interrogation." She hissed,

"It's feeling like what you made it in to." He snapped through gritted teeth.

"Then I'd like to make it into something else." She said, shortly, "I asked for what you had, and since you don't seem like the type of man to be shy about his aces. That means that you have a few pictures of me entering a man's hotel room but that does not prove I cheated on my husband and it definitely doesn't prove I murdered him."

At that point the door opened and Nick entered, "Sara."

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Crawford, can you give us a minute?"

"No, I bloody well cannot!"

"She's right, this isn't an interrogation, and, as I pointed out, she won't talk to you."

Crawford, with much swearing kicked his chair away and stalked from the room, slamming the door behind him.

"Cute tactics Nick." She snapped, without thinking.

"Drop the act Sara, these aren't tactics, I'm scared to death for you, what the Hell is going on?"

"I don't know." She whispered, now Crawford had gone and her body had caught up with her brain and realised it was Nick she felt the strong exterior crumbling leaving behind a vulnerable wreck.

"Why were you in his hotel room?"

"I...We met at the bar, he offered to walk me back when it turned out we had neighbouring rooms, I lost my card key, got locked out of the room, he offered to let me use his phone..."

"Is that all he offered you?" Nick asked, quietly.

"No, he offered me a place to sit while I _made _the phone call, what does that make me guilty of?" she snapped.

"Hey, take it easy..."

"Take it easy, Nick you think I'm cheating on _Grissom!"_

"Honestly, I wouldn't blame you if you said you did..." he murmured.

"What?" she breathed, sure she had misheard.

"You've not exactly been the happiest these past few months...Doesn't take a psychologist to figure out you and Grissom are having problems."

"Every marriage has issues...Ours are just amplified by distance." She whispered.

"Yeah..." he murmured, "Did you become romantically involved with Taylor Wynard to compensate for those issues?"

The sweet, inviting, citrus lips flashed through her mind again as she answered, in a hushed whisper, "No."

"You're sure?"

"Quite sure..."

"OK...OK." he seemed to sense that she could take no more, standing, he placed a kiss on her head and whispered, "Sit tight here for a bit...I'll get you out of this Sara, I swear it."

Tears rolled silently down her cheeks as he left her, unable to stay any longer knowing he could never bring himself to leave if he did.

...

Nick moved through the lab. Evidence, I need evidence. _The evidence never lies._ For once, he did not want to hear his old mentor's voice. He had loved Grissom, the family they had created in the lab; he missed that and would have given everything to have it back. But Nick was not blind, he had seen how miserable Grissom had made Sara, intentionally or not, it was unacceptable. The evidence was telling him that Sara was upset, and had been for some time. _And now look what she's become involved in..._

"Henry. Have you analysed the DNA in our hotel room?" Nick asked,

"Yeah, the wine glasses have come through, the sheets should be done in a minute." He said, anxiously.

"What did you get on the wine glasses?" Nick asked,

"Victim's DNA on one...Sara's on the other."

"OK." Nick said, he could live with that, she had told him that.

At that point Hodges poked his head through the door, "Nick?"

"Yeah?"

"The purple trace that you pulled from under your victim's fingernails and on the bed? It's silk." He said.

"Silk?" Nick repeated, thinking. It was one of those strange little clues that could either mean nothing or everything, he was not sure which.

At that point the printer spat out the results of the sheets. After a tense glance around the room, Henry did his job and picked it up. He turned pale and sank into his chair, taking a deep breath he handed the results to Nick who gazed at them with Hodges staring over his shoulder.

The DNA confirmed that Sara had slept with their victim.

"God Sara, what have you done?" Henry breathed.

"She's cheated on Grissom..." Hodges said, unable to take the information any further than that, for his own sanity.

"And she's lied to me..." Nick said in a strangled whisper.

A/N: Let me know what you're thinking so far. Some of this is based on episode spoilers I've come across but some of it's from my own twisted creation. Thank you all for your reviews! If you have a minute, I'd love your thoughts on how this is shaping up.


	4. Bars and Bullets

**Chapter 4**

Bars and Bullets

Nick had left Sara alone in the interview room after promising that he would fix this for her. _Well it would be hard for him to make it worse..._She reasoned, _He could at least have brought me some decent tea...Or better, coffee..._

Shocked at her sleep-deprived mind's priorities she attempted to reshuffle them by giving herself something tangible to focus on. Since she had been presented with the pictures of Wynard, her mind had gone into overdrive. She was desperately trying to remember what had happened so that next time they came a calling she did not have to rely on Crawford to tell her what had happened.

She cast her mind back, trying to focus on details. She had been lonely in her room, her phone call with Gil had cut out on them, the signal telling them to do what they should have done long before that. A heated argument that would normally send couples into different rooms was complicated by distance. A cold shoulder over thousands of miles was unbearable and their marriage was at breaking point without that added tension. It was altogether too easy to punish the other person, simply by ignoring their calls and messages, which happened accidentally more often than not, but it would inevitably be taken as bitterness and contempt over distance and so they had learned not to hang up after an argument but to stay awkwardly, simmering, on the line until one of them brought up a meaningless and mundane subject of conversation such as _the weather._ Fortunately, the signal had cut, preventing hours of pointless small talk that upset both of them more than their initial argument.

She had decided against trying to call him back and had automatically switched her phone off, not wanting to be disturbed by Grissom _or _Russell. The only company she wanted was that of a stiff drink, or six. She had a week off, Grissom had been supposed to join her and allow them to reconnect but the God's she did not believe in had decided to punish her for her lack of faith and prove that they _did _exist by preventing him from coming, and so now all she would have to show for her holiday was a week's worth of hangovers and bad choices that the others would pick up on.

_Screw them._ She thought as she started proceedings strongly with a double vodka. She thought sadly of how different this could have been. She had booked them a hotel, partly so he would not see the vast amount of work she now took home with her to keep her company in his absence and partly because deep down, there was still a vein of romance desperately trying to break through to the surface.

A tall stranger settled himself in the stool next to her, ordering a large whiskey and accepting it in the same way she had accepted hers, as though it were a last request. He glanced at her and said, "Rough night?"

"Rough year." She shot back, downing the vodka and asking for another, single this time however.

His eyes darted to her wedding ring, "Married?" he asked, dejectedly.

"Yes." She said shortly and then, unable to stop herself she had added, "Unhappily."

It was not an invitation to bed, far from it, it was a cry for help. She couldn't talk to her co-workers, they were too close to Grissom, and the ones who weren't knew her too well for it to be comfortable but not well enough to _know _her. She sure as Hell couldn't talk to her husband and if she was honest, had no-one outside of work that she was comfortable enough speaking to it about. This however, this was a perfect stranger that she could forget about in a few vodkas and a morning. This was perfect.

"Why's that then?" he asked, knowing what she wanted.

"My husband's living thousands of miles away and can't wrench his head up out of the microscope for long enough to see the train wreck that's hurtling towards him."

"And what train wreck would that be?"

"That of his marriage." She sighed, the vodka plus insomnia combining to give a loose tongue.

"Is there any way to fix it?" he asked, for him, concerned to get her in to bed, for her, concerned because he cared.

"God yes." She breathed, "But that would involve admitting that it's broken in the first place." She said, her finger circling the top of the glass.

"Not one to admit he's wrong?"

"No, no, he's wrong all the time, something he freely admits, but usually he admits he's wrong and moves on to the next theory, _this _time he has to actually accept that something's wrong and then try and fix it."

"Have you tried talking to him?"

"Believe me, we've wracked up enough minutes to make a call centre blush, unfortunately constructive communication is not a strong point of either of us."

"Well maybe you should just go out and see him?" he suggested.

"I can't..." she whispered.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm afraid that the thing we can't bring ourselves to stay over the phone will become too easy in person." She choked. "I'm sorry, you shouldn't have to listen to this."

"It's OK, I don't mind...I kind of know how you feel. I tried the whole long distance thing once..."

"Please tell me you ended up married with three kids and a house by the sea."

"Sorry..."

She groaned into her now empty glass, she had not slept and barely eaten for days and the alcohol had gone straight to her head, deciding against another she picked herself up and said, "Thank you for listening, really, but I should go."

"Let me walk you back up to your hotel room."

"That's really not necessary."

"Please, if you don't I'll stay here all night and drink myself to death."

"Alright..." she said, slowly, deciding she at least owed him that.

"What room number are you?"

"3266." She said,

"Weird."

"Why?"

"I'm 3268, we're right next door."

"Weird indeed..."

"Well, thank you for walking me back." She said, as they stopped outside her room.

She began digging in her pockets and swore softly under her breath.

"What's wrong?" He asked, coming back towards her.

"I've lost my key card." She snarled, annoyed at her own stupidity.

"Here, you can call down for a new one on my phone." He offered.

"It's really alright...I'll walk down."

"If you think I'm going to let you walk back down fifteen flights of stairs to stand at a desk for three hours when I could be enjoying your company you're sorely mistaken." He said, smiling slightly.

"Alright then...Thanks...I just hope you know, train wreck or not, I'm a married woman."

"Yes, yes Mrs Morals, just come in and sit down already." He smirked. She smiled back and entered.

After being on the phone for a good twenty minutes becoming more and more irritated as the hotel made her jump through more hoops as she tried to remember the fifth and seventh letters of her first teachers cat, and he sat sipping white wine and smirking at some of her more sardonic remarks, he offered her a glass as well.

"No, I really shouldn't." She said,

"Well judging by that phone call we may be here a while." He grinned, "We may as well be comfortable."

She smiled and accepted the glass.

"So, you're name's Sara?" he asked smiling.

"Yes, well done Sherlock, what's yours?" she replied.

"Taylor, but I like Sherlock."

She smirked, "You married? Girlfriend?"

"Nope, that's why I'm in Vegas, trying to get lucky...Well that and my sister had a business conference and said I should get out more...She paid for my plane ticket, what could I say?"

She laughed easily and said, "So if you've not got a wife or a girlfriend, what are you trying to drink away?"

"That. The absence of said wife or girlfriend."

She laughed again, "Seriously?"

"I lost my job back home in Florida, someone filed a duff sexual harassment suit and they asked me to step down gracefully, I knew it was a set up and I didn't have the money for legal fees, I agreed."

"That sucks."

"Why yes, yes it does...Look who has the great detective skills now." She smiled at the irony of this and took another sip of wine.

"What did you do?" she asked,

"What do you think I did?"

"Something in an office." She smiled, "I'd guess accountant."

"Very good, yes I was in banking, I did the taxes of a large firm in Florida...What do you do in the real world?"

"What do you think?"

"Stripper?" he smirked.

"Excuse me?"

"Well you've got the looks for it." He said, silkily.

"Hey, back off, I've said-"

"So married people can't do a little flirting?" he said easily,

"Alright...No not a stripper."

"Something _science-y..."_

"What gives you that impression?"

"You talked about your husband having his head in a microscope, but you talked like you understood it...Doctor?"

"Close but no, I'm forensics." She said,

"So you _are _the detective?" he smiled, picking up on his earlier comment.

"Yes."

"Well Detective Sara, you're husbands an idiot." He said, softly.

"What gives you that impression?"

"Well if I had the choice between spending all my time with a microscope or with you...I know which one I would choose."

"Thank you." She breathed.

"I shouldn't be thanked for pointing out the obvious."

She couldn't remember having moved towards him but they were now very close, he smelt sweet, with a hint of citrus...He _tasted _sweet too as he leant in and gently pressed his lips to hers...

A/N: What do you think to that? I hope that everything has been in character and makes sense so far. Once again, thank you all for your reviews, you can never have too many of them, don't be shy, let me know what you thought :)


	5. Occam's Razor

**Chapter 5**

Occam's Razor

She choked as she opened her eyes again; feeling sick and wishing that she could forget everything she had just forced herself to remember.

At that moment the door was opened, Nick re-entered the room balancing two cups of coffee on a thin folder.

"Here." He said, handing her the coffee.

"Thanks." She whispered, unsure of what this meant.

"Can we go over it again? From start to finish? As much as you remember?" he asked quietly.

"I guess." She said, cradling her cup. She had been so desperate for the coffee and now she had it, her throat had turned to ash and her stomach had turned against her, making it impossible to drink. "What are you looking for Nick?" she asked, sure that he was after something.

"Motive for a start." He said, taking a seat opposite her.

"What do you mean motive?" she asked, drily

"Well I can't see a reason behind you killing him."

"Oh, so we've moved to murder now?" she snapped, flaring up again.

"Afraid so."

"That's a bit much based on grainy CCTV photos."

"Exactly what I thought." He said, quietly, "So, can we start at the beginning again.

"OK, I went down to the bar to drown the ruins of my marriage in several strong drinks." She began bluntly.

"And Wynard joined you?"

"Yes."

"Did he try and touch you, kiss you anything you weren't comfortable with?" he asked, bluntly.

"No...He was quick to ask about my wedding ring but other than that...No." she said, quietly.

"So he knew you were married?" Nick asked.

"Well I didn't tell him the ring had suddenly fallen onto my finger without me noticing." She snapped.

Both of them were tense, without ever having given the other an open reason to be so. They had known each other for too long. It didn't take much for them to subconsciously tell that there was something wrong with the other and for that to have an effect on them. Any slight tension between them was picked up on immediately and intensified in their own behaviour. They both knew that something was wrong with the other. And they both knew that they were not currently sharing this, something that was putting incredible strain on their conversation and their relationship.

"That didn't put him off?" Nick said,

"If you mean sex, couldn't tell you. If you mean sitting having a conversation like a normal human being then no, it didn't." She spat.

"OK, so during this 'normal conversation' what did you talk about?"

"The joys of long distance relationships." She said,

"Put your heads together and had a quaint little chat about how awful it is not being able to sleep with your spouse on demand?" Nick said, cruelly.

"Don't you dare patronize me!" she snarled, showing the first real anger of the two of them, "You have _no _idea! None. You have no right to sit here and question me about the intimacies of my relationship and my personal life, I've answered because I trusted you Nick, because I thought you were telling the truth and that you wanted to help me, because I thought you understood, because I thought you gave a damn. I don't want him home so I can sleep with him and send him back to Peru when I'm done with him. I want him back so that when I've pulled a triple and I need someone to talk to, that he's there, to listen and to help me through it. I want him to be there so that when I walk into the house I get more than a dog and a take-away menu to greet me. I want him back so that when I wake up screaming at three am I have more than empty silence to comfort me. I want him back so I can remind myself why I fell in love with him in the first place."

Tears were streaming silently down her face. She had needed to get that off her chest for months and Nick felt bad that it had been under these circumstances she had been forced to reveal them to him. No matter what he now knew she had done, she was still like a sister to him, and after that he almost agreed with what she had done. He would never condone it, but he understood it. Even Sara had her limits.

"I'm sorry." He muttered.

"So you went upstairs, then what?" he asked, quietly, all he needed now was for her to tell him the truth. Not for him to have to shove it in her face. What she said now would change the outcome of this investigation, of their friendship of everything. The world as they knew it was balanced on a knife-edge and _everything _depended on this next answer.

"And then nothing." She sighed, hollowly.

His face darkened, "Shit." He hissed under his breath as he pulled the DNA results from the file on the table.

"Nick-" she began.

"You lying bitch!" he snarled, the sound of her voice setting him off as he flung the piece of paper down onto the table at her, turning away, unable to look at her as she tentatively picked it up.

She was shocked, Nick never spoke to anyone like this, never mind her. She stared at the sheet of paper on the table. It confirmed that she had had sex with Wynard. Her throat constricted as thick, hot bile made its way up from her stomach.

_She could feel his lips on hers, sweet and gentle, encouraging her to step out of her comfort zone and ignore the ring on her finger for a few hours. She pulled away suddenly and found the piercing green eyes filled with a strange emotion that she had not expected to find in them_.

"You lied to me..." Nick breathed, shaking in an effort to control himself, and forcing her to do the same as she suppressed the sudden torrent of memories she was being overwhelmed by,

"No I did not." She said softly, staring in revulsion at the sheet of paper. Her trembling fingers hovering over it, wishing that she could burn it, along with the image it had caused to form in her mind.

"You slept with him Sara!" Nick snapped.

"You believe that I would cheat on Grissom?" she asked, hoarsely.

"I believe the evidence." He shot back.

"Don't you dare pull that on me Nick. That doesn't tell you anything." She whispered. She could not believe that he was saying this to her. He believed that she would cheat, on Grissom no less. Hell their marriage was screwed up, more than Nick could ever guess, but to think that he would believe she was capable of that, evidence or no evidence, chilled her to her core.

"No? It tells me you're a liar Sara...You lied to me...Crawford I understand but..." he trailed off, unable to look at her, disgusted.

_She could feel his soft, smooth fingers making their way slowly up her calf. She did not feel entirely comfortable with this, but she could not deny that she deserved it after everything that Grissom had done to her. Especially recently..._

"I didn't..." she said, in a strangled whisper, only just coming to believe it herself.

"Sara, you owe me more than this. More than lying to my face. Look at me."

She did and in his eyes she found the same burning intensity that had filled Wynards, _he had led her into the bedroom, none too gently and had now thrown her down onto the soft mattress. Using the thin ties from the curtains to bind her wrists to the metal headboard of the bed. Rose petals surrounded her as he placed a hungry kiss on her neck._

"What do you see?" she whispered, "Do you see a cheat? A murderer?"

"I see a liar...And that means that you could be any of those things." He said, coldly.

"I am not a liar." She breathed, forcing herself to believe it.

"Sara you-"

"I told you that I wasn't romantically involved with the victim...Believe me, nothing romantic happened in that hotel room." She whispered.

_The loose fabric of her trousers was moved easily down her long legs. Even they had turned against her, they wanted him to do this. She strained against her bonds, the tight, thin silk cutting in to her wrists. She tried to call out to say something but he placed a hand over her mouth, silencing her as he removed her underwear._

"Technicalities Sara." He snarled, dismissively.

"Devil's in the details." She whispered, "You've got proof I slept with him, you've got no proof that it was consensual."

"Sara what-"

"He raped me Nick...Congratulations, there's your motive."

A/N: Hopefully this is a somewhat surprising twist, there's no point in a twist if it doesn't make you go 'wait, what now?' this chapter was easy to write in the way it wrote itself, I knew where it was starting and where it was going to get to, but ridiculously difficult based on the fact that I have been second guessing every second word. If you've got a minute to review and let me know if my little insecurities have any basis in fact I would be exceptionally grateful :)


	6. Forget Me

**Chapter 6**

Forget Me

"_He raped me..."_

The words echoed around in Nick's head as he watched her face losing the little colour that had remained. The words continued to bounce, mockingly, around on the inside of his skull but he could not bring himself to understand them. He could not believe that they were true.

Their truth was, however, confronting Sara with the speed and brutality of a freight train. She had been piecing together the fragmented flashbacks that had been dogging her both in her dreams and interrupting her waking life since she had left the hospital. Now she understood. Now she knew. And now she wished more than anything that she could forget.

"He, he wouldn't" she stammered, in a valiant attempt to force the horrific images now flooding through her mind into words, to no avail.

_He was leering down at her, smiling sickeningly, _enjoying _himself as she strained against her bonds with such ferocity that the thin pieces of silk he had used to tie her hands cut like razors into the taut skin of her wrists. The blood, shockingly vivid and scarlet against the dulled colours of her flashback, snaked their way down her slim arms; the horrific nightmare that had wakened her at Desert Palms was now filtering back in, making more sense as she lay on the bed of roses, wrists weeping crimson and whishing that she could drown herself, drown herself in alcohol and make sure that she did not feel, did not know, did not remember what she now saw him doing so clearly to her. She wanted out, she wanted it to stop; she wanted _him _to stop..._

She forced herself back into the present, Nick had half risen from his chair looking desperate but knowing better than to try and approach her, knew that he could not touch her, could not reach out to her because she would be terrified of him. She had lost all control of her brain which took that opportunity to explain her reaction to Nick, it made sense, as far as she could make sense of anything at that moment in time, as he had tried to comfort her, and she in turn had fled from his touch as though his fingers were laced with bleach, her body had been acting out of instinct to something that her mind had not been able to process at that time.

She was processing it now. Reliving it in the wrong order, the confusion somehow intensifying the horror as his hand slowly made its way up her leg, definitely without permission, as he informed her that 'no' was not an answer that he would understand or accept from her.

Sara suddenly jumped to her feet, unable to sit stewing in her memories in the claustrophobic interrogation room she ran from it, allowing herself to be swallowed by the welcoming, cool embrace of the bathroom beyond.

Nick let her go, numb, still in just as much shock as she was, watching her helplessly as she fell apart while all he could do was attempt to ignore the agony of the knowledge that, even if he knew how, she would not _could _not allow him to help her.

He had no idea what he was supposed to do, what he could do that would not make the situation worse. He knew what he couldn't do, he couldn't go after her, try and force her to accept the help he so desperately wanted to provide for her, that would damage their relationship beyond repair, the very invasion of her privacy when she was at her most vulnerable, he knew she would never forgive him for that. The first thought the he was able to give any credence to was Grissom. His answer to so many problems within these walls was Grissom, once he had settled upon that answer he rarely strayed from it but now he remembered the way that Sara had spoken about their marriage, not in the most positive light. From what she had said it almost sounded as though both of them had given up, or more appropriately that they knew they should give up, the distance between them had become more than physical and it had taken its toll on both of them, they were exhausted. However he rejected this quickly, no matter how much stress their relationship was under, they loved each other and cared for each other, one would take a bullet for the other without question. Sara trusted him, at times when she could not trust anyone else, even herself, she would want him, and right now Nick was sure she needed him.

However at that moment in time Grissom was in Peru, oblivious to his wife's suffering, Grissom could not help him _now._ Nick knew that he could not leave Sara alone in this state until Grissom flew to Vegas, even if he got the next flight out it would still be several hours before he could be with her.

At that moment Russell hurried over to Nick, he had seen Sara flee from the room, and Nick follow her out while not actually daring to approach her and knew that something was seriously wrong if Sara was rejecting Nick.

"Nick?" he said, urgently, "Nick what happened?" he asked with gentle firmness.

"He raped her Russell."Nick choked in a hoarse whisper, looking up at the older man and watching his face transform.

Russell rarely became angry or overly emotional on a case, always the consummate professional, never a hair out of place, picking up his calm with his kit in the mornings, but, as shown when Katie had been taken, if someone threatened his family he would stop at nothing to protect them. His face darkened and he snarled,

"Did you just say what I think you said? That bastard-"

"Yes." Nick said, tightly, anger suddenly becoming the driving force within him as well.

"Why didn't she say anything before, at the hospital?" he asked, concern displayed on his face as he began to think about the most important thing in this situation.

"I think, I think she just remembered there, she was confused at the hospital, she had had a lot to drink, and she may have been drugged. Or she might just have been in shock Russell I don't know, I made her-"

"No, no you stop that right now Nick. The last thing I need, and the last thing she needs is for you to start drowning in self-pity and looking for ways to blame yourself for this. If we search hard enough we can all find a way to bring this back to us and that's wrong, this is about her, and you're no good to me if you can't get your head around that right now." Russell said, sharply, staring intensely at Nick.

"No, you're right...What should we do? She won't let anyone in possession of a Y chromosome anywhere near her, no wonder..."

"What about her husband, is he in town?"

"Is he ever?" Nick said, a sudden edge of bitterness to his voice, he was somehow blaming Grissom for this mess, which was neither fair nor helpful.

"OK, OK, can you call him? He should know what's going on, Sara would want that, whatever our personal feelings towards her marriage, she's the one we need to think of just now."

They were in agreement about that, Nick nodded, pulling his phone out and dialling the last number he had for contacting his ex-supervisor. "What about Finn or Morgan, I'm not really sure I want to send anyone in with her, she's private at the best of times and she might feel threatened when she's this vulnerable, but we can't just leave her and do nothing, and they might have more success."

"That's a good thought...Morgan's out in Henderson, but Finn's at the lab. The two of them have got pretty close over the past couple of weeks, I'll give her a call; see what she thinks...Can you get word to Greg and Morgan too? They should know."

"I'll call them after I get a hold of Grissom." Nick promised.

They moved away to make the calls, Russell stayed in the deserted corridor as he rang Finn while Nick retreated to the privacy of the interrogation room to call Grissom. He had a tense wait, but just as he was sure that the call was going to go to voicemail, the achingly familiar voice answered,

"Hello, Gil Grissom."

Nick was surprised by his feelings towards him. On one hand he missed him, Grissom had taken him under his wing, as he had done with every member of his team, and Nick had never wanted him to leave, however the nostalgia was tempered by bitterness at the knowledge of how miserable Sara had been recently and how, despite his best efforts, he blamed Grissom in part for her situation. If he had been there at the hotel with her, Taylor would never have approached her.

He knew that this was completely ridiculous and unjustified, but he needed something to direct his anger at and as Taylor was dead, Grissom was the next best thing short of the God he did not believe in.

"It's Nick." He said, his voice cracking before he could say anything else. Grissom registered his tone and did not speak, allowing him to compose himself and force himself to continue, "You need to come home..."

...

Sara was slumped against the cool tiled wall, drenched in a cold sweat, and shaking violently, party from cold but mostly from flashbacks. She shuddered as she was overcome once more by the flood of memories that her mind seemed to take great pleasure in replaying at a sickening speed,

_Wine was poured into the glass that she offered him. Rose petals tumbled from his mocking hands onto her feverish body. His lips on hers, first sweet and then bitter, agonising and sickening. His hands on her torso, delicately moving up to her chest in slow, deliberate patterns. The sound of her voice whispering, incoherently in her ear. Her heart pounding, painfully in her chest as he began to tie her hands to the headboard, placing a finger to his lips mockingly and a short silver knife to her throat as she began to protest._

She retched over the sink, her stomach was empty however and the violent contractions caused her to double up in pain, curling into a ball on the floor feeling the ice cold tiles cradling her feverish skin as she trembled violently as the world around her blurred into nothingness again.

_Sound. Deafening sound. The pop of the cork in the wine bottle. The gentle feel as his fingers danced cruelly upon her skin, taunting her as she struggled. His hands covering her mouth, he smelt of alcohol and sweat and of that strange citrus that he tasted of. The thought of which made her feel sick. He gently eased her clothes from her protesting body and she flailed and screamed. The sounds of her screams filled her head and echoed tauntingly around the tiled walls. _She curled tighter into herself, her screams lost in the muffling fabric of her sleeve.

She wrapped her hands around her head, and pulled it painfully down to her stomach that was writing again as nausea clawed at her. She was rocking backwards and forwards as she tried, unsuccessfully to fight off another assault.

_He had finished, or so she had thought, as he trailed a row of mockingly tender kisses from her neck to her stomach, making it convulse in horror. She refused to look at him but he forced her to meet his gaze, looking at her with those horribly intense eyes as she drowned in their depths. He began to untie her bonds and as he did so he leaned forwards and whispered, "You like it rough don't you Sara? That's what he told me." As her wrists were freed she collapsed to the floor choking and shaking as he stood over her, laughing coldly. Everything was black with nothing but faint sounds and feelings as evidence of what happened next. His laughter filled her ears as the world span around her, the loud, unmistakeable bang of a gunshot silencing it. I killed him? Confusion as he once again lunged for her, his outline leaping towards her, and grabbing her, her violent screams mingling with his cruel laughter once more._

"Sara! Sara! It's OK, you're OK." Finn said, desperately, her arms enveloping the other woman as she writhed and screamed within them with a strength that surprised her.

"No, no you take your hands off me! You get off of me! Don't touch me!" she screamed, incoherently as she struggled,

"Sara it's me, it's Finn, you're safe, you're safe I swear it." She said, soothingly, feeling the burning heat radiating from the terrified woman's skin, hot to the touch and red raw from where she had clawed at her invisible attackers.

Sara collapsed in the older woman's arms, tears streaming down her face as her fragile frame was wracked by her violent, uncontrollable sobs, so intense it forced her to gasp for breath. Finn held her gently, murmuring promises of security as she rocked her gently back and forth, rubbing her back soothingly as the hysterical woman in her arms attempted to regain control of herself.

Finn was completely out of her comfort zone. Sara was usually the one calming her down when she was in hysterics, she knew that her emotions raged within her, but they were so far from the surface they never troubled her. Sara had complete control over herself which had earned her the reputation of being cold from those who did not know her. Finn knew that this loss of control, more than anything else would be tearing her apart.

"You're alright, it's over, he's dead, he won't hurt you anymore, I won't let him I swear it." Finn murmured soothingly, praying that she was doing _something _right.

Sara's breathing seemed to be calming, but she refused to allow Finn to let go of her, feeling as though the older woman's touch was the only thing stopping her from completely falling to pieces.

"I'm sorry." She choked finally, in a voice that sounded as though it had been mercilessly ripped to shreds.

"Don't be stupid." Finn muttered, shaking her head, unable to believe Sara.

"Nick." She began, asking if he was alright, praying that he did not blame himself for having brought all of this to the surface

"Nick's a big boy, he'll be fine, you worry about you..." Finn admonished softly, knowing what Sara meant and again being shocked at her ability to think of him at this moment in time.

"I don't do victim." She breathed, quietly.

"I know..." Finn said, quietly. This, at least, was something that she could fully understand.

The two women sat in silence on the cold floor, holding on to one another, Finn just as terrified as Sara was, however they understood one another. Finn knew that Sara could come to terms almost comfortably with what had happened, but that she could not deal with the aftermath, Sara knew that Finn was just as insecure as she was beneath she mask she concealed it behind, but she was glad for it, it meant that she did not fuss, afraid that she would say something wrong. All she needed right now was company, was for someone to be there and give her something real to hold onto, she did not need to be wrapped in cotton wool and drowned in tea and philosophical ramblings.

"Gil?" she suddenly choked.

"It's OK, Nick's called him, he'll be on a flight now I expect." Finn told her reassuringly. When she was greeted by silence she added uncertainly, "Is that not what you want?"

"No, I do want him, I don't know I just..."

"Sorry it's come to this to get him here?" Finn asked perceptively.

Sara nodded sadly. Finn gave her a reassuring squeeze, happy that her breathing seemed to have returned to normal. She was still shaky, and her clothes clung to her as she was covered in a cold sweat as a result of God only knew what she had been forced to relieve alone in the confines of this bathroom.

"Come on, let's get you home. Can you stand?"

"I don't-"she began reluctantly,

"There is only one acceptable answer to that, and home is non-negotiable." Finn said, firmly.

Sara smiled ruefully and got to her feet. Though her limbs trembled violently, with Finn's support she made it out to the car and was enveloped by into the welcoming arms of the cold night that they exited into. She was infinitely grateful to the other woman, and the fact that one look from her sent curious bystanders scuttling away in the opposite direction, including Nick and Russell. She could not deal with questions and apologies and explanations. She just wanted to sleep.

A/N: Well what can I say about this chapter. It took me a while to work up the nerve to start writing this as I was sure I'd make a mess of it...Maybe's aye, maybe's no, you'll have to let me know. Hopefully everything was in character, as far as circumstances allow. I was a bit unsure of using Finn to support Sara, but I love the way they're developing their relationship onscreen and thought that something like this would not work so much that it worked perfectly and it didn't seem appropriate to use anyone else given the circumstances. Still let me know what you think, hopefully this is accurate and well done, I really wanted this chapter to be perfect given the content but I'm not sure. Thank you all for reading and reviewing so far! Hope you're enjoying.


	7. Fresh Eyes

**Chapter 7**

Fresh Eyes

Russell had sent Nick to the hotel to join Greg and Morgan after Finn had wisely taken Sara home.

He was still in shock as he navigated the crowded neon streets of Vegas in the evening, making his way towards the hotel going over everything in his head and trying to make sense of it. Her face when she had told him continued to haunt him, the tortured eyes emblazoned upon his, refusing to release him.

Frankly, he should have gone home too, something that Russell had recognised and tried to enforce. He was in shock, and blamed himself for pushing her and forcing her to remember what had happened to her. He would never forgive himself for that, she should not have had to go through that because of him.

He, who had been more concerned about his ex-boss, and had pitied him, had felt for him because he believed that Sara could have been cheating on him. He now hated him. He had abandoned Sara, pushed her away, forgotten the promise he had made to her. He may have left the lab to follow her into the unknown, proving that he loved her, but he had been swallowed by his work again and, as before she had been pushed aside. It was also his lesson 'the evidence never lies' that had made him ignore the human element. Sara. She would never have cheated on Grissom, the idea alone would have repulsed her and have made her guilty, he should have known better, should have seen what was coming and protected her from herself.

Instead he was now wracked with guilt, he would have to live with the knowledge that, when she had needed him most, he had alienated her, pushed her away, called her a liar and a cheat when in fact she'd just been raped...

He would never forgive himself for that. But more than that, he was terrified that she would never forgive him for that. He could not say he would blame her if he did. How could she bring herself to trust him, especially at this moment when she was so vulnerable, when it was clear that he did not trust her?

He remembered the anger that had flared up inside him, how furious he had been with her. He could not see why she was not being open with him. It had been out of self-preservation, her mind attempting to protect her but not in the way he had assumed. He thought she had committed a crime, at the very least cheated on Grissom, at worst, killed a man, when in fact she was protecting herself, from herself, and she was not deliberately lying to him and misleading him, she had been hurt and confused and he hated himself for what he had done to her, what he had forced her to do to herself.

He remembered Russell's comments about self-pity and knew that it wasn't doing either of them any good. What was done was done. They all knew the true horror, he couldn't let it matter _how _she had found it out, he just had to accept that she had and now do what was best for her. He owed her that much...

He was amazed, frankly, that he had managed to make it to the hotel with both himself and the car in one piece. He was lucky. He made his way to the reception and then slowly began to climb the stairs. The long fifteen flights of stairs giving him plenty of time to straighten out his head and work out how he could best help Sara get through this, all of his thoughts had to be focussed on that now.

He ducked under the crime scene tape strung up over the door and headed in to find Morgan and Greg processing and discussing Sara in an undertone.

"Nick." Morgan said, startled and jumping as he approached them.

"How is she?" Greg asked at once.

Nick had been expecting this. How could he _not _ask? He thought he had had an answer prepared as he had walked up the stairs, neat, coherent, something that would eloquently sum up the situation but while it danced tantalizingly on the tip of his tongue, his brain would not allow him to transform thoughts into words and in the end he just croaked hoarsely,

"I don't know."

Greg looked disappointed, he and Morgan had been clustered away together, taking the scene apart piece by piece, trying to find something. All they had been able to do since they had been contacted and informed of what had happened to Sara was speculate, guess at what the Hell was happening back at the lab. Nick had been their lifeline, their reference point and contact with the outside world; they had been relying on him to give them _something. _

"I mean, I don't think she really knows herself...She's confused. Finn's taken her home."

"That's good...She should try and get some rest."

Nick thought back to the violent flashbacks that Sara had been exposed to, judging by the piercing screams that had reached him from the bathroom, shoving in his face the knowledge of just how useless he was in that situation. He privately felt that 'resting' would not be something Sara was able to do for some time, but Morgan did not need to hear that, "Yeah, hopefully...Finn will look after her."

"I'm glad someone's gone with her, then she won't be on her own." Greg muttered, giving Morgan's shoulders a small squeeze. The implication was there that he too was having mixed feelings towards their ex-supervisor, but there was also the faint implication that he too blamed Nick for his part in this, instinctively knowing that the realisation had not just struck Sara during the interrogation room, as Nick had made out to them.

Nick bit back the retort that came with this and said, "What have you still got left to do?"

"Next door." Greg said, taking charge as he quietly indicated Sara's room, "We're nearly finished in here. Maybe you and I can get started next door and Morgan can finish up in here."

Morgan nodded, and Nick agreed, though he also thought that Greg may have another agenda by removing Morgan from their immediate vicinity. However he made no comment regarding this and led the way into the room that Sara had been found in.

They began to pick their way through the room; the bed did not look as though it had been slept in. It looked as though Sara had staggered through into her room from next door and collapsed in the spot she had been found in the next morning. She had lain there unconscious and alone over night and the thought made Nick's blood run cold. He found several spots of blood embedded in the thick cream carpet and swabbed them for DNA though he was fairly certain it would be Sara's.

"Do you think she did it?" Greg asked quietly, not looking up from the card he was examining that had come with the champagne bottle, _Mr. & Mrs. Grissom._

"I wouldn't blame her if she did." Nick replied darkly.

"That's not what I asked...Do you think she's capable?"

"We're all capable Greg...No matter how much we wish we weren't. You put enough pressure on anything, it'll eventually crack."

"He put on a Hell of a lot of pressure..." Greg muttered,

"You seem to have decided that she's guilty." Nick said, accusingly

"No, I'm keeping an open mind and not letting my personal feelings cloud my judgement." Greg shot back.

"How can you do that? It's Sara. You can't think she did this."

"She could have Nick. If she was any one else she would be in a cell right now. It's only because it's Sara that she's not."

"What the Hell is wrong with you Greg?" Nick yelled, advancing threateningly on the younger man, shocked by his words.

"I have to Nick. I can't look at this through rose-tinted glasses, I have to be realistic or I just...I don't want to believe that she killed him. If I'm honest I don't think she did, but I have to stay open to the possibility, because otherwise, I'll just go mad..."

Nick nodded. He could understand Greg's position but that did not mean that he agreed with it.

"What's wrong?" Greg asked, noticing Nick squinting uncertainly at one of the ceiling tiles.

"Does that tile look as though its's sitting lower than the others to you?"

"I don't know, maybe..." Greg said, uncertainly.

Nick grabbed a plump chair that was clustered around a small coffee table and use it to allow himself to step up and reach the tile. Carefully pushing it up and over, he popped it out if place and carefully allowed his hand to explore the dark, freezing cavity above him.

His hand closed around a cold, hard metal object and he withdrew it carefully along with a handful of dust.

"What have you got?" Morgan's voice said from the door, almost causing Nick to topple off the chair, narrowly avoiding this fate as Greg hastily steadied him.

"The murder weapon." Nick said, in a hollow voice, showing her the gun he had removed from the roof.

Greg and Nick arrived at PD after having received a very strange call from Vartann. They had printed the gun at the scene and sent digital images of the prints to Mandy for immediate processing. They had been heading back to the lab when Vartann had called, saying that a witness had come forwards, claiming to have evidence about Sara's case.

Intrigued they had both agreed to come at once to take part in the interview. On asking who their witness was Vartann had told them, mysteriously, that she was a 'friend'.

When they arrived at PD, Vartann met them, looking grim, "Have you had anything back on the gun yet?"

"No." Nick said, shortly, too one edge to be more delicate, "What about Brass?"

Brass had gone to visit an ill family member, and as a result had not been around for the fallout of Sara's arrest. He had received the call shortly after dropping her off for interview and had left immediately, meaning that no-one had been able to get in touch with him immediately and tell him what had happened to Sara.

"Someone managed to get through to him. They couldn't tell him over the phone, they've asked him to come back as soon as he can, probably scared him to death..." Vartann told them, leading towards the interview room.

Nick looked carefully at the woman sitting alone in the room. She was slim, but tall, and had light olive skin that matched her thin light brown hair. Her eyes too were brown but there was a haunted quality to them that stole all of the beauty they may have possessed. She was familiar to Nick, but he was not immediately sure _why_.

Before they could enter the interview room, Nick and Greg's phones went off in unison.

"I hope she's got a pound of his flesh inside her bag as proof she killed him or we could have a serious problem." Greg muttered, looking at the horrible confirmation text.

The prints on the gun had matched Sara, and worse they had _exclusively_ matched Sara's, no-one else could be proven to have handled that gun.

Neither of them in a particularly sunny mood as they made their way into the interview room.

"Who are you?" Nick asked, in a rougher tone than he intended out of concern and desperation.

"A friend of Sara." She replied shortly, looking at him with her big, tormented brown eyes, in a way that made him feel as though she could read him like a book and after that one look had the ability to know his darkest secrets.

"As her friend do you have a name?" Greg asked, hoping they would recognise it, unlikely as this was.

"Of course I do, but it's no concern of yours." She shot back.

"It is of concern to me. Sara's my friend too I want to make sure-"

"If she' your friend then you make sure you help her by sitting down, shutting up and listening to what I have to say without asking a hundred and one insignificant questions in between." She said flatly, Nick could not help the corners of his mouth twitching as Greg continued valiantly,

"I'd like to know who you are before-"

"I'll tell you when I'm good and ready, at the moment I'm not, so we can either end this here and I'll leave or we can agree to disagree on that point and move forward."

"Let's." Nick broke in, not much caring who this woman was if she had something that might be able to help them at this moment in time, "What do you have for us?"

"I think someone may be framing Sara."

"What?" Nick and Greg exclaimed, praying that she could prove this.

"A man came to me a few days ago, he was very charming, and very liberal with his money, making my alcohol intake a little more than it ought to have been." She flushed darkly here, but forced herself to continue, "I was stupid, flattered by his attentions and my tongue has never been the most sensible when alcohol was involved. He subtly asked me questions about Sara over the few days we were together, they seemed innocent enough at the time, he asked me about other friends as well, it didn't seem to mean anything...Then I heard about this Taylor man being murdered, and Sara being your prime suspect."

"How would you know something like that?" Nick asked, immediately suspicious.

"I have friends in high places." She said, mysteriously before smirking at the look on his face and adding, "Namely Sara."

"She told you about this?"

"No, Santa Claus left a note on his way to visit the Tooth Fairy." She snapped, sarcastically,

"What did you tell this man?" Nick asked.

"I told him that Sara was staying in the hotel, supposedly having a romantic getaway with her husband, I had a picture of us together on a night out that I showed him, a few other details, they were the main things that got me thinking."

"You thought that bar tittle-tattle and a few pictures are enough to prove setting someone up for murder?" Nick said, unable to hide his disappointment.

Greg didn't give up so easily, "Miss, could you tell me, was this the man you saw?" Greg asked, cautiously pushing an image of Taylor across the table.

"No." She said, flatly, "I have a good memory, that's definitely not him." She said, shaking her head.

Nick stood up and walked away from the table, feeling hopeless. She had been their last hope and it had turned to a bitter failure that would lead to Sara, rape or no rape, being arrested. They could not ignore something like this, no matter the circumstances, no matter the suspect.

"I do have a picture of him if it would help." She offered, digging in her bag.

"It won't hurt." Greg said, who was covering it up with more success than Nick, but who was just as disappointed.

Her picture turned out to be a hand-drawn sketch that she pushed across the table towards Greg. However the incredible level of detail she had put into it was not the reason Greg's eyes widened in shock,

"Nick." He said, hoarsely, "It's him."

A/N: I do realise I've been a bit mysterious in this chapter, (hopefully, although you may be able to guess who my two unknowns are) but it will be resolved soon I promise :) I hope Nick's feelings at the beginning were accurate and seemed in character and that they at least went some way to explaining his behaviour in recent chapters. Thank you all for your reviews! Whether you enjoyed it or not if you have a minute I would love to hear your thoughts on this.


	8. Daddy's Little Girl

**Chapter 8**

Daddy's Little Girl

Sara was settled quietly on the sofa, Hank's head in her lap and Finn bustling around the kitchen preparing to put a cup of sweet tea in her hands.

"Here you go." Finn said, gently handing her a steaming mug and settling down on the chair opposite her.

"Thanks...You really didn't have to do all of this."

"No and Taylor didn't have to-"she began, before she blanched and caught herself, "I'm sorry that was a really stupid thing to say."

"Not as stupid as what I said." She said softly, taking a sip from her mug, "I know you didn't have to, and so do you, there really wasn't anything you could have said to that..."

"When is Grissom arriving?" Finn asked, quietly, taking a draught from her own mug.

"He should be here in less than two hours, providing there isn't any drama at the airport. Why? Wanting to know when you can escape?" she said lightly, the corners of her mouth twitching into something that, under different circumstances, could be mistaken for a smile.

"No, no, of course not." Finn flustered.

Sara laughed softly and said, "You should go...Really, you've done more than enough."

"Sara-"

"No, please I know what you're going to say but really...I just need a little bit of time on my own before he comes back to try and get my head straight."

"I think that's going to take a little longer than two hours." Finn murmured gently.

"I know that, I do...I don't just expect this to go away after some tea and a good night's sleep, but...There are some things that I just need to get sorted in my head before he walks in..."

"You can't be worrying about your marriage just now Sara...If anything else this could bring you closer together."

"There's some irony in that...I'm not thinking about that now...This puts everything into perspective if nothing else...Please Finn...I appreciate everything that you've done, really I do but please I just, I just need to make this decision on my own please just..."

She could see that she was upsetting the younger woman and, though she was still reluctant, she reasoned that Grissom would be home in a few hours, "OK, OK, I'll go...On one condition, you swear to me that if you need _anything _from life saving surgery to a box of chocolate ice-cream, you call me."

She smiled tightly, "Deal."

Finn smiled, pulled Sara into a quick, awkward hug, and quietly slipped out of the apartment, closing the door behind her with a soft click.

She had not been gone for five minutes when Sara regretted the decision. She had thought that she needed the chance to be independent and strong, not have someone hold her hand like a five year old, attempting to make her overdose on tea. Little did she know that Finn had been the only thing between sanity and complete destruction.

Sliding from the chair and adding her now cold mug to the growing pile in the sink she padded into the bathroom. Hank watched her sadly from the chair where she had left him, his large, sad eyes telling her in no uncertain terms that whatever it was she was planning on doing was a bad idea.

She closed the door quietly and began to peel off the layers of clothes that she had been swathed in. She should have taken them off a long time ago; they were still clinging to her, as though afraid that if she removed them she would fall to pieces. She very nearly did, the horrible feeling of vulnerability now clung to her and made her frustrated with herself. I can't even take off my bloody clothes without...

She took a deep breath and pushed the thought out of her head. It would get her no-where.

Without warning the feeling of filth began to claw at her like a poison. She felt him all over her, as though in removing her clothes, she had revealed him beneath them.

She dived into the shower cubicle and hastily turned on the water. Not caring that the limited puddle of water the shower contented to spit out was ice cold she stood under it. It was numb, unfeeling, it did not care what had happened to her, it would not judge her or question her decisions, it would content to do its job and cleanse her of his sins.

The shower began to warm up and her skin stopped protesting as much, the goose bumps that had erupted all over it in protest to the freezing stream of water that had cascaded onto her naked form, she almost began to enjoy it.

She was able to lose herself in the pleasant warmth of the water gently falling upon her. It made her numb; it made it almost possible for her to forget what had happened to. But at the edges of the warm pool of light the cleansing water created around her, the cold wave of darkness was lurking, just out of sight but never out of mind.

As she raised her head and closed her eyes to allow the water to run over her face she let out a sudden shout as a violent memory forced itself to the forefront of her mind. _He was holding her under the water, smirking as she screamed and struggled. He told her that this was punishment for coming home late. She was not to stay and play out in the rain; she was to come when called. Water was not fun. He laughed as she swore that she would never do that again. He pulled her away and led her into her room, telling her that he believed her and he would forgive her because he was his little girl, but now he had to make it up to her. Her stomach plummeted, she knew what he wanted. This happened at least once a week, but surely, everyone else just got on with it. They didn't complain, neither should she...He forced her down onto the mattress, the king sized bed making her look laughably tiny. As he held her wrists, the water he had drowned her in began running down her arms, the cold giving her something else to focus on._

_The temperature of the water changed. It became hot, and thicker than water should be. It became dyed a deep scarlet. The man laughing above her was no longer her father, but a stranger with a name she had picked up accidentally in a bar. He too held her wrists and sought to punish her for disobeying him. Except now, she did not think that this should be happening to her that everybody dealt with this at some point. Now she thought that she hated this miserable bastard as much as she had hated her father and would have done anything to stop what she knew was coming. _

When her eyes open neither her father, nor Taylor Wynard was assaulting her, the only thing that was touching her was the oblivious innocence of the water from the shower above. She was curled in a ball on the floor of the cubicle, though she could not remember falling to her knees, the bruise blossoming on her lower back from where it had struck the wall evidenced what had happened to her.

How had this happened? How could he do this to her? How could she _let _him do this to her when she knew how it would end up? After the number of times her father had. But that had been different then, she had deserved that...So maybe she deserved this. She had led him on. She had entered his hotel room. She had accepted his wine. She had accepted his first kiss. No, no she hadn't, he had kissed her, she had said no. And that had to be punished.

She screamed and held her head in her hands as she tried to stop the flood of lies that were filling her head. Her hysterical tears added to the flow of the shower as she staggered to her feet, determined to regain control of herself.

Desperate to block out the pain coming from inside her head, she sought to drown it in physical pain. In something that there was a legitimate, logical _reason _for. Her fingers fluttered softly over the temperature dial and, almost without permission, began to inch it up higher than it was designed to go.

She felt the near boiling water scald her skin and a slow, maniacal smile spread across her face as she sunk once again to her knees in a state close to ecstasy. This she could deal with. This she understood. This was something she could feel. This reminded her that she was still alive. This was perfection.

Thick steam began to fill the small bathroom as the burning liquid continued to descend upon her, leaving angry patches of red skin where it struck.

_He slammed into her violently, making her scream._

She struggled to breathe as the thick cloying steam filled her lungs.

_Her wrists tore in protest as she tried to get away from him. _

Her skin red-raw and inflamed burned as the shower continued to burn her tender flesh.

_She was running through the house, he was following her with a short, bloody knife, yelling after her, telling her that she owed him._

She retched as the pungent smell of her citrus body-wash reached her nostrils.

_She was thrown onto the bed, her mother screamed at him to leave her alone; he struck her around the face, knocking her out before turning back to his daughter._

She began to tear at her skin, desperate to remove all traces of him, her sharp nails leaving deep bloody furrows in her thin pale flesh.

_He laughed as he swung off the bed away from her, easily, as if nothing had happened, while her body entered a state of shock in attempt to protect her. _

Someone was reaching over her, turning the shower off and crouching down to meet her. She struggled, trying to push them away, terrified.

_He was leaning over her, stroking her hair, telling her that she was his angel and that he would never hurt her again. _

Someone was wrapping her in a soft, cotton towel, swearing that no one would ever get to her again, they would protect her.

_She had not believed him. She had been right to. Huddled in the corner, broken and beaten. He told her that she would never leave, that no-one would want her, that he could do this for as long as he liked because no-one cared enough to save her. _

She was being lifted from the shower cubicle and placed on the cold, stone tiles of the bathroom while her saviour gently stroked her sopping hair and murmured softly and incoherently to her.

_He was leaning in and tenderly removing her bonds, whispering in her ear in a voice that made her want to throw up, "You like it rough don't you Sara?"_

"Sara! Sara!" She forced her eyes open. Grissom's eyes were wide and terrified as he looked down at her, thrashing in his arms in terror.

"Gil." She choked, before dissolving into hysterics, unable to do anything else.

He held her gently, wrapping her protectively in the soft fabric as she shivered, partly from the dramatic change in temperature and partly from the horror of the memories that had assaulted her. He cradled her in his arms and held her gently, marvelling at the strength and tenacity of the woman in his arms. After everything she had had to deal with in her life and now this...He stroked her hair as he murmured softly and incoherently to her, soothing her and clutching at her as though she was made of glass, as she attempted to get herself under control again.

They lay in silence for hours. Enclosed within their small tiled prison, not caring for the external world. He was soaked to the skin, partly from her, and partly from the shower. He did not care. He was glad that Nick had called him, and dreaded to think what would have happened, what she would have done to herself, if he had not arrived and she had been left alone all night.

As it was, her skin was red-raw and there were deep, ragged, self-inflicted, cuts on her arms, when she had attempted to escape from whatever hallucination had been tormenting her. He pulled her closer to him at the thought of how close he had come to losing her, not just tonight but in these last few months.

He did not need to say the words; he just had to hold her in the way he did for her to understand that he would never willing leave her side again.

A/N: Hopefully this chapter came off alright and the flashbacks didn't seem like too much. I know that I used them a few chapters back but I thought it was the most effective way to show Sara's frame of mind and while I know that some things definitely come off better on camera, hopefully this had _some _sort of effect and worked to some degree, and besides I don't think it's realistic to expect that she has one meltdown at the lab and then this never troubles her for the rest of her days. I'm really quite concerned about this chapter that it wouldn't work for some reason or another and while it was nigh on impossible to write, it _was _impossible to know where to finish, hopefully the ending wasn't too cheesy. Anyway, enough about my many rambling insecurities, thank you for reading, I hope you've enjoyed this, if you have a second, please leave a review and let me know what you thought!


	9. Dead Men Tell No Tales

**Chapter 9**

Innocence

"Look I'm sorry Russell I know she's one of your people but I can't just ignore this-"

"She's not just one of my people Crawford, she's a good person and she doesn't deserve this. You know what happens if you do this."

"Yes, I do, but my job is the same as your job, to catch criminals, and right not there isn't anything you've told me that says that she's not a killer."

"You don't know Sara-"

"No, you're right I don't and that's probably a good thing, you knowing her is clouding your judgement, she's already guilty as sin and yet she's at home sipping tea while Taylor Wynard is dead."

"He's not the only victim in this, don't you forget that."

"He might be."

"And what the Hell is that supposed to mean?" Russell demanded sharply, staring at the other man with something close to hatred. "She's lost everything; she's at home 'sipping tea' because she's been through Hell. He _raped _her Crawford, he raped her, you tell me how that can possibly mean she's not a victim in this."

"She says she was raped, there is a difference."

"Don't you dare, she wouldn't lie about something like that you cold bastard-"

"I'm going to stop you there before you say something we both regret."

"I'll say that and a Hell of a lot more to protect her. She didn't kill Wynard and she was raped, no-one can put that on, no-one would and I will say a hundred and one things 'we'll both regret' to get you to drag your head out your ass and start looking at facts.'"

"The facts are, you've got proof they slept together, even if it was rape, that just gives her motive, her prints on the murder weapon and blood drops on her carpet that belong to both him and her, I mean come on Russell, you take that to the DA and he'll file right now, no questions asked, slam dunk, case closed."

"I've also got proof that this could be a set-up. That she's being framed for murder and you're walking into a trap set by the killer to screw _both _of the victims in this." Russell said softly.

"Set-up? Where's your proof?" Crawford asked, eyes narrowed.

"I don't have enough to put to you yet, but I will, I just need more time."

"I can't not arrest her Russell, even if this set-up thing pans out she-"

"Has been raped. And all she wants to do right now is sit at home with her husband and a cup of tea and try and figure out what the Hell has happened to her. I let you throw her in a cell right now and she loses _everything_. She can't handle that now Crawford, I know she can't, and the outcome may well be the same. Even if you don't do this for me, or for Sara, do it for the poor women who's suffered more than she ever believed possible and is finding her entire life being pulled out from under her, no-one deserves that Crawford. Our job is to speak for both victims...It's all very well speaking for Taylor Wynard, but someone has to speak out for Sara Sidle too. Call off your dogs, not forever, just for now. Please."

He considered him, "It'll be all our heads if she's guilty. You've got twenty-four hours, staring now. If by the end of it you can't provide me with something conclusive to say that your girl's innocent, then she goes to prison and I go to the DA, no negotiation."

"Thank-you." He said shortly, already walking away from the other man, not willing to waste any more of their precious time on him.

* * *

"OK, we have twenty-four hours to prove that Sara didn't do this, otherwise Crawford goes to the DA and she's finished."

"That heartless bastard." Morgan muttered, "After everything she's been through and he still wants to punish her?" she trailed off, shaking her head.

"Sara didn't do this." Greg said firmly.

"I know that, you know that, Hell _Crawford _knows that, but we have to _prove _it and right now that's looking difficult, whoever's setting her up, they're doing a bloody good job of it."

"Who _is _setting her up?" Morgan asked no-one in particular.

"Him." Nick said, placing the sketch the woman had given them on the table.

"No." Morgan breathed, "Why would he do something like that?"

"Because he's a sadistic psychopath who wants to hurt her and has figured out that this is the best way to go about it." A voice from the door answered roughly,

"Finn." Russell said, surprised as she moved into the room to join them, "I thought you were with Sara?"

"I was, she asked me to leave, she needed a bit of time to herself before her husband came back." She explained.

"And you just left her on her own?" Nick demanded hotly,

"Like you did you mean?" she shot back, angrily, firing up instantly.

"I didn't have a choice!" Nick snapped

"I wonder why." Finn said cruelly.

"Hey, hey, this is not helping!" Russell broke in loudly, "We have twenty-four hours to prove that she's innocent and this is not helping. Grissom should be back by now anyway and Finn couldn't force herself on her, she needs to take control of her life again." Russell told them calmly.

"You really think he was pissed off enough with Sara to set her up like this?" Morgan asked the table at large.

"Yes." It was Greg who answered, "He blamed Sara for her death, I know he had been following her around for a while...And he's crazy, I wouldn't put anything past him."

"So our focus now is that Ronald Basderic is setting Sara up for murder, to punish her for Edie's death?" Russell clarified quietly.

"What if he did more than that?" Nick said softly

"What do you mean?"

"Well he couldn't just rely on Sara running into someone at a bar because her romantic week with Grissom was ruined, and then deciding to kill him because he happened to rape her..."

"What are you getting at Nick?" Morgan asked quietly,

"What if he set her up with Taylor?" Nick said, softly, "It's all too much of a coincidence otherwise."

"There would be evidence of them communicating." Russell said, "He couldn't avoid leaving a paper trail, if Nick's right, there's no way Taylor would take the risk without getting something in return."

"You think he paid him to rape her?"Finn said, disgusted.

"Maybe, maybe not, maybe the deal was just to get her to sleep with him. We know Taylor was desperate for money, maybe Basderic had already pushed him too far and he didn't think he had a choice."

"It must take more than money to turn someone from a prostitute to a rapist." Morgan whispered hollowly,

"Everybody has their price." Finn said darkly,

"Yeah, and Taylor's price was thirty thousand dollars." Nick said coldly, staring at the laptop screen in front of him "This is the activity on Taylor's account, two days ago thirty thousand dollars was sent to his account from an off-shore account registered to Ronald Basderic."

"I think we should bring Mr. Basderic in for a cosy chat." Russell said, through gritted teeth.

"Maybe we should bring in Wynard's sister too...She might know about Basderic, or at least something in Taylor's character that could back this up." Greg suggested.

"OK, Finn, Morgan, I want you to talk to the sister, gently, we'll get on to Vartann, track down Basderic."

* * *

"Do you want anything Nicole, a drink of water or-" Morgan began

"No, I'm fine." She said, quietly, the mask of confidence that had adorned her in the hotel had long since evaporated.

"We just wanted a chance to talk to you Nicole, about Taylor." Morgan said, taking a seat beside Finn at the table.

"Have you found out what happened to him?" she asked quietly.

"Not quite...There have been some _developments _in the case that we wondered if you could help us with." Finn said delicately.

"I'll definitely try." All of her previous energy was gone, drained by shock.

"Have you ever seen this man before?" Finn asked, sliding a picture of Basderic in front of Nicole.

"No. No I don't think so why, who is he?"

"We think he may have been involved in your brother's death...He transferred thirty thousand dollars into your brother's account two days ago...Do you know what that could have been for?"

"No." She breathed before choking hoarsely, "God Taylor, what did you get yourself involved in?"

"That's what we're trying to find out Nicole." Morgan said soothingly, sliding a picture of Sara across the desk towards her,

"Do you recognise her Nicole?"

"No. I'm sorry, I'm not much help." She wailed desperately.

"Not at all Nicole, you're doing fine." Finn said reassuringly.

"Who is she? What did he do to her?" Nicole said in an undertone.

"What makes you think he did anything to her?" Morgan said, sharply.

"What do you think he did to her?" She countered, looking up at them, her eyes full of a strange emotion neither of them could place.

"We think he raped her." Finn said, softly, thinking that she understood why Nicole had asked.

"And you think she killed him because of it?" she aksed,

"Maybe. We think she may have been set up by this man, who also put your brother in a position whereby he ended up assaulting her...Does that sound plausible to you?"

"Yes." She whispered, gently brushing Sara's picture with her fingertips, "Taylor always had a temper, if someone paid him to sleep with her, that's what you think isn't it?" Finn nodded silently, "And then if she tried to say no..."

"You think that Taylor could be capable of this?" Morgan asked quietly.

"I know he is." Nicole murmured softly, "I hope she did kill him for what he did to her." She gasped suddenly and covered her mouth with her hands looking horrified, "I'm sorry, that was a terrible thing to say." She squeaked.

"It's OK." Finn said softly, "Has he done this to you Nicole?"

She nodded, "When we were younger...Anytime he got rejected by a woman or if I annoyed him...Our parents never knew. He was the golden boy when we were kids, he could do no wrong. I played along with it and put up with him, just going with it and pretending that he was just my brother when we were adults because I didn't want to contemplate the alternative..."

"I'm sorry Nicole..."

"I'm sorry too...Do you think this woman killed him for what he did? Or do you think she's being set up by him?" she asked, indicating Basderic again

"We don't know Nicole."

"A part of me wishes that she had done it. Show him that he won't always get away with it, that she was strong...Another part of me wishes she didn't because I don't want her to go to prison for him...That sounds awful doesn't it...I care more about a total stranger than my own brother." She choked back tears then.

Finn and Morgan looked at one another quickly and silently agreed, Morgan told her, "Thank you Nicole, really...You can go now, we'll keep you informed I promise."

"Thank you." She said, getting to her feet, "Could you...That woman if you see her...Tell her...Tell her I'm sorry." She said before burying her face in her hands and making her way from the room.

"Poor woman." Morgan muttered,

"Yeah...Well now we know, Basderic set them both up, he knew that Sara wouldn't cheat on her husband but that she was lonely enough to seek the company of Taylor, and he knew enough about Taylor's history to know what he would do if Sara rejected him..."

* * *

Nick and Russell were now armed with the information Morgan and Finn had got out of Nicole Wynard and were more than ready to confront Basderic with it.

"Hello Ron, long time no see." Russell said, coldly, taking a seat opposite him, "You've been busy since last we met."

"On the contrary, my life has been very empty since Edie left it."

"I don't think so...I think you found a way to fill the gap." Nick snarled, threateningly, placing pictures of Sara and Taylor on the table.

"Ah, Sara...You know I have a soft spot for her Nick." He said, silkily, in a way that almost caused two of Russell's team to be accused of murder, "This poor man, I'm afraid I don't know."

"I'm afraid you're lying." Nick growled through gritted teeth, placing a copy of Wynard's bank statement on the table in front of them, "If people just randomly sent thirty thousand dollars to broke people that they didn't know the world would be a better place." Nick spat, "Unfortunately I don't think that's what you had in mind."

He smirked, "Maybe, maybe not...What do you think I did Nick?"

"I think you paid Taylor Wynard to sleep with Sara, as payback for Edie's death."

"Now why would I do that? Sara's a beautiful woman Nick, I mean, I wouldn't kick her out of bed, would you? She didn't need me interfering in the relationship department, as far as I understand it, her marriage is falling apart without my help, so why would I set her up like that?"

Russell hastily answered before Nick attempted to throttle Basderic who was pushing particularly sensitive buttons with ease, "Because you knew what Wynard would do if Sara refused to sleep with him."

"Really?" Basderic said, in mock amazement, "What did he do to her?"

"He raped her you son-of-a-bitch." Nick growled unable to say anything else in his fury.

"Really? Shame...It's always the pretty ones...I find them, and someone else gets the pleasure of breaking them."

Nick launched himself across the table at Basderic and Russell seized him around the waist, hauling him back to his seat, "Nick!" he hissed.

Basderic never flinched and said smoothly, "Tut tut Nick, temper like that, it'll get you in to trouble."

"The same can be said for you." Russell said, breathing hard, he felt exactly the same as Nick, furious, "Why did you send him the money?"

"I'm no expert Mr. Russell." He said sardonically, "But that man looks dead to me, are you accusing me of something."

"Yes. Murder." Nick snarled.

"Well I'm afraid I can't take complete credit for that..." he paused and then said very deliberately, making sure that neither of them missed a word, "I'll admit I gave Taylor a little, _encouragement_ to sleep with Sara, not that he should have needed it, but I certainly didn't tell him to _rape _the poor thing...What he chose to do and what she then did about it, nothing to do with me gentlemen..."

A/N: Hopefully this all makes some sort of sense, including Basderic's involvement, I know I've left several things unanswered but I promise I'll do my best to tie up all the loose ends. Thanks for reading! Please review if you have a minute.


	10. Save Me

**Chapter 10**

Save Me

Grissom was moving around the kitchen, quietly making them both tea with Hank padding around at his feet. His shirt was still damp after he had pulled Sara from the shower but he didn't care.

She had lain in his lap for hours while he cradled her and attempted to calm her down. Eventually, she had been able to stand whereupon she stumbled shakily to their bedroom, declining both his offer of physical and emotional support. He had decided not to push her and had retreated to the kitchen where the solemn dog was waiting, knowing that something was wrong. When Grissom came home, it was usually a happy occasion.

It had pained Grissom more than anything to hear her crying quietly from their bedroom and knowing that he could do nothing to help her. She needed a moment to find herself and regain control without him. If he had attempted to help her, her defence mechanisms would have kicked in instinctively in an attempt to protect her. No-one had told him what had happened to her, just to get himself on a plane and get the Hell back to Vegas, which he had done immediately, however he had enough experience to guess what had happened, although he prayed for once that the evidence was lying to him. Even if he was wrong, he knew Sara, and knew better than to try and force her to accept the help that she needed.

He was about to enter the bedroom and hang the consequences, becoming concerned when she exited the bedroom. She softly ran a hand over Hank's soft head as he trotted, protectively to meet her, accompanying her to the kitchen.

"I'm sorry." She whispered, her voice was cracked and hoarse, but perfectly steady.

"Sara." He said gently, unable to keep the pity from his voice and knowing that she would react badly to it.

"I'll be fine..." she murmured, accepting the cup of herbal tea he offered her.

"Well that's something..." he said, an involuntary smile tugging at his lips as he shook his head.

"What?" she asked, softly, confused.

"I had expected you to tell me that you were already fine." He grimaced, eliciting a small smile from her as she sipped her tea.

She hated this, hated how uncomfortable this had become, dancing around one another as though they had just met, she hated what _he_ had done to her, and what he was now doing to her.

Grissom reached out instinctively and lightly brushed her arm with his fingertips. The gesture was completely innocent but instinct took over and she flinched. He could see the pain and frustration flare in her eyes and knew that she was not rejecting him by choice.

Shakily, she extended her hand to him and allowed her fingers to close around his wrist, gently leading him in to the living room. They both settled on the sofa, but the half a foot or so of distance her body forced between them made him feel as though she had asked him to get back on a plane to Peru. He berated himself for thinking that. None of this was her fault, and she was not doing this on purpose, her instincts were taking over and forcing her to respond in this way, she did not want this.

He allowed her to sit quietly and compose herself as they both continued to sip the scalding tea. Hank lay across both of their feet, bridging the gap between them with his body.

"Who called you?" Sara asked eventually, needing to say something.

"Nick."

"...What did he tell you?"

"To get my ass on a plane immediately or he would come for me."

She choked on her tea and he patted her back without thinking, feeling her tense beneath him he paused but the defiance that flashed momentarily in his eyes told him not to stop.

"What happened?" he whispered, knowing that she needed to say it but could not think of a way to tell him.

"I...He, I didn't..." She began, stumbling and choking as her mouth filled with hot bile.

She was confirming his fears, even though she hadn't managed to tell him in as many words. However he knew that she needed to tell him, and while he was not sure that he was prepared to hear it, he would go through whatever she needed him to,

"Start at the beginning." He said softly, reaching out to take her hand before thinking better of it and hastily removing it, hoping she hadn't noticed. She had, their eyes met and she slipped her hand into his, the simple gesture showing the depth of her vulnerability and how much she needed him. He gave it a soft squeeze as she began to speak in a flat voice, barely audible despite the silence that filled the apartment.

"I, I had booked us in at The Tangiers...When you cancelled, I had to get out of the house and I thought 'what the Hell' the room's booked...I was in the bar, he approached me...Offered to buy me a drink, I was lonely, and I needed someone to talk to, I didn't see the harm in it...Afterwards, he offered to walk me back to my room, I wasn't keen but we had neighbouring rooms, it was unavoidable...I lost my key card so he invited me in to call reception from his room. He offered me a glass of wine while we waited. He kissed me. I, I pulled away, he, he got upset and-" she broke off, shaking violently as she tried to suppress her tears but he knew that she had to say it, for her own sanity, "He raped me Gil..." she finally said in a strangled whisper.

He closed his eyes, he had known, known from the second he saw her and yet, having her confirm it in her own words was somehow worse than seeing her sprawled, helplessly in the shower cubicle, tears were streaming down her face and she seemed both confused and frustrated by them.

He pulled her closer to him, enveloping her in his arms without thinking. He felt her tense beneath her and relaxed his grip on her slightly in response but she breathed, "Don't." She needed him, she needed to know that he wasn't repulsed by her, she felt safe with him, she knew that he would not hurt her. This realisation was the only thing that made it possible to justify her continued efforts to live.

He nodded, understanding and allowed them to lapse into a comfortable silence. After a while she tentatively laid her head in his chest, listening to the rhythmic, hypnotic breaths and the steady, reassuring beat of his heart as she allowed herself to close her eyes, consenting to allow the exhaustion that had been clawing at her for hours to overcome her.

Surprisingly it was not horrific flashbacks, assaulting her while she was vulnerable, that woke her but a soft tap at their door. She sat bolt upright, knocking the blanket that Grissom had wrapped tenderly around her shoulders to the floor, startling Hank who also sat up. Grissom got quietly to his feet and made his way to the door, Hank remained protectively by Sara's side, the dog's reaction, or lack thereof, to their visitor was the only thing that calmed her.

Grissom had opened the door and stood aside to allow Sara to see who it was. She nodded, almost imperceptibly, but it was enough for him to know what she wanted.

"I'll take Hank out, I won't be long." He said, allowing their visitor to cross into the apartment. "I'll take my phone, you can call me if you need anything." He added reassuringly. She hesitated, but then nodded, allowing him to leave, emptying the apartment save her and their visitor.

"Hey..."

"Hey." She said, allowing him to sit. She smiled as the German Shepherd padded into the apartment after his owner, "Hello boy." She whispered as he allowed her to tangle her fingers in his thick fur.

"We, er, went for a walk; I decided to drop in since we were passing."

"Nick, you live on the other side of town."

"Well, there might have been a drive _to _the walk but still..." he said lamely, trailing off as she smiled,

"Well played." She said, with a small grin as the dog settled himself at their feet.

"How are you?" he asked, quietly.

"I'm fine." She replied automatically,

"Stupid question, sorry..." he muttered.

"Who knows?" she asked, softly,

"Everyone." He said quietly, slightly confused by this, "Well everyone on the team." He clarified quickly.

"How are they taking it?"

"I, they're OK, they're just worried about you." Nick said, amazed that she was more concerned about them than she was herself.

She was quiet, folding the blanket she had toppled to the floor when he had first arrived to give her fingers something to do, and as she did the sleeves of her top slid up, revealing the deep cuts on her wrists that had been made by the ties Taylor had put around her wrists. He couldn't believe that he hadn't noticed them before as he felt his stomach clench, knotted by guilt. The colour draining from his face caused her to follow his gaze as she hastily tugged her sleeves over her injuries, breaking eye contact with him as she did so.

"Sara, I'm so sorry-"he choked, he had about a hundred and one other things that he needed to say to her, that she needed to hear before she decided if she would ever forgive him, he was not going to lose her without a fight, but at that moment his tongue was punishing him for its previous errors and was preventing him from speaking.

She looked at him and said, quietly, "You have nothing to be sorry for Nick."

"Yes I do Sara, I shouldn't have pushed you in that interrogation room, I should have trusted you, I should have known that you would never...I understand if you can't forgive me for that Sara, I can't forgive myself for that, I should never have put you through that I-"

"Stop." She said quietly, she may have been barely audible over his frantic assertions but he fell silent at once. He had made the mistake of trying to force contact between them, trying to take her hands in his, forgetting himself in his desperation and she had reflexively jerked them back, more startled than anything else, but he panicked, believing that she was disgusted by him and his words.

This was not true and she tentatively placed a hand on his, forcing back everyone of the instincts she possessed, each of which was currently attempting to break the contact between them, in an attempt to make him understand. She did not want to hear his apologies or his excuses, but not for the reasons he presumed. She did not blame him for what had happened to her, unknown to him, the memories of Wynard's assault had been coming back to her in flashes long before she entered the interview room. An unhappy coincidence was now the source of the guilt that cut him to the core but she did not need him to explain himself to her. He did not owe her anything and the last thing she needed was him falling apart on her now.

"I don't want to hear your apologies Nick, I've told you, you have nothing to be sorry for."

"Then why do I feel so guilty?" he said, his voice as tormented as his eyes.

"It's human nature...When something bad happens to us, or the people we love, we want someone to pay for it. We need someone to blame, something to take our anger out on, to make them hurt as much as we do, revenge is biological...It's in our nature, as a method of protection, as much from ourselves as anything else...When we can't find anything to blame based on logic alone, it's the first thing to go because our instincts tell us there must be _something_ to hold responsible and to punish so we choose the next best thing, even if there is no reason for it. Narcissism joins the party and that's why we inevitably find ourselves at fault. You're blaming yourself for something that you had no part in, it's tearing you apart and I want you to stop Nick. You didn't rape me-" she broke off abruptly, her brain registering what her mouth had said a fraction of a second later, causing her to flinch. She turned away from Nick and severed the contact between them. He seemed to understand as he leaned forwards slightly, while being to sure to maintain a comfortable distance between them and said,

"I can't, I can't just forget what I did to you-"

"You have to. I need you Nick. I need you to help me, I need to know that you're there for me, that you've got my back, I need you to be strong for me Nick because God knows I'm not, so I need you to pull yourself together and stop wallowing in self-pity because I can't do this on my own. Whatever you said in that interrogation room, I need you to forget about it, I have, because I know that you care about me Nick, that you were angry and scared and confused, I love you Nick, I trust you, you're family to me Nick, I can't do this without you and if I lose you...After everything he's done, and _is _doing to me, don't let that bastard make you think you're anything like him..."

Tears were shining in her eyes as her voice cracked. He pulled her into a soft hug and she allowed it, knowing that he needed this almost more than she did and she knew that, while his plight may have filled her with an energy she did not know she had, had turned her back into what she wanted to be, the giver of advice as opposed to the receiver, it would be short live and she would need him more than ever in the coming months. Her self-control only allowed them a brief moment together before he was able to sense her discomfort and hastily released her, retreating from her once again.

"Why didn't they notice anything at the hospital?" he asked quietly, the thought striking him, even if he hadn't noticed the cuts on her wrists and the bruises that must pepper her body, the paramedics would have.

"They did...I wouldn't let them do anything about it." She mumbled, "I woke up in the ambulance before we got there. I didn't want anyone to touch me, I didn't know why...I was confused at the time, and scared. I think a part of me knew what he had done but a bigger part of me didn't want to know...I wouldn't let them do much more than put me on a drip...I discharged myself not long after you came to see me..." she said quietly,

"God Sara..." Nick breathed, he could not even begin to imagine what she had been through, how it must have felt waking up in an ambulance, alone, covered in cuts and bruises, sore, confused, rejecting the touch of the people that should have been there to help her...

They both fell silent and after a few minutes she offered to make them coffee, more to give herself something to do than anything else and asked quietly from the kitchen,

"What's happening at the lab? Am I a fugitive yet?"

"Not quite...It doesn't look good for you Sara, I won't lie to you..." This was one of the things she valued about him, no matter how bad things became he would never try and censor the truth to protect her feelings, he understood that much about her.

"What have you got?"

"We found the murder weapon in your room, your prints on it, blood drops on the carpet, evidence that you had been in his room."

She nodded, "Then why am I here and not in a cell?"

"We're beginning to put together evidence that shows you were framed."

"What do you mean?"

"You remember Ronald Basderic?"

"Vividly."

"He sent transferred thirty thousand dollars into Wynards account, two days before his death."

"You think-"Sara began, feeling sick

"We know...Basderic admitted it, though he claims he only paid him to sleep with you...He won't admit to anything else..."

"Which leaves us back at square one..."

"No, if he set Wynard up, he set you up too."

"Not necessarily Nick..."

"Sara, you didn't do this."

"How do you know? You haven't got any evidence that he put the gun in my hand, that I didn't pull the trigger." She said eyes wide and terrified.

"Sara, what are you saying?" Nick breathed, throat dry.

She looked petrified, the hope that had flared in her eyes upon hearing that they believed she was being framed gone,

"I can't remember what happened Nick." She whispered, "I could have killed him..."

A/N: This chapter was much harder to write than I expected! Hopefully everyone's reactions were at least semi-believable, and that I managed to explain everything alright. I haven't quite decided exactly where I'm going to go with this so I'm leaving it fairly open at the moment, thank you all for your reviews so far! The support on here is fantastic and I'm very grateful. If you have a moment, I would love to hear your thoughts on this :)


	11. Homecoming

**Chapter 11**

Homecoming

"Sara, you couldn't have-"

"That's just the thing Nick I could...After he, after he raped me, I can't remember anything. Just flashes, laughter, gunshots, silence...Nothing that suggests I'm innocent."

"Nothing that suggests you're guilty either." He pointed out quietly, "Do you not remember what you said to me? 'I don't care what you say, I could never take a life'. I believed you back then and I believe you now."

"You can't know that Nick...After all the time on this job, it teaches you that _anyone _is capable of anything..."

"Not you, not this." He said, firmly.

"You've changed your tune." She said, bitterly, "You were all for it earlier."

"That was before I knew the truth. I've made that mistake once in the last few days, I'm not going to make it twice."

"I don't think you are Nick."

"Do you think you did it?"

"...I don't know...The thought that I could have terrifies me more than knowing one way or the other..."

"I will find out for you Sara. You'll get through this, I promise."

She looked into his eyes, deep sincere, and she wanted to believe him. She _needed _to believe him...

At that point the door opened, making them both jump and Grissom walked back in, Hank at his heels. The two dogs greeted one another delightedly, before turning to watch the tense exchange between their owners.

"Maybe you should go Nick." Grissom said, softly.

Nick turned to Sara before saying, "Sure...I'll keep you up to date Sara, stay strong." He murmured, placing a soft kiss on the top of her head, briefly gripping Grissom's arm, before summoning Sam with a word and leaving, quietly closing the door behind him.

Grissom sat down quietly beside Sara as she said quietly, "We need to talk..."

...

Nick walked through the deserted lab. After the interview with Basderic, Russell had sent him home telling him that he could only deal with one member of his team being accused of murder at a time. Nick had seen the sense in this and had left in a cloud of frustration and had gone out for a long run with Sam before realising that he could not put it off any longer.

He had had to see Sara. He was both glad, and not that he had done. On one hand he was relieved that she understood what had happened in the interrogation rooms, he understood too, to an extent. She had terrified him and she was right, the possibility was worse than the truth. They had both lashed out in fear and frustration and neither of them had meant half of the things they had said to the other.

On the other hand, she was petrified. She had no idea what had happened after that bastard had raped her and that was tearing her apart almost more than what he had done. Whatever happened it was going to take her a while to recover from this and the first step was finding out what the Hell had happened to her.

Most of the others had been forced by a combination of hunger and hygiene to go home, Russell, Finn and Morgan having agreed to go home, change and meet somewhere for breakfast and a quick case recap before returning to the lab. As a result the halls of the lab that Nick now walked along were empty, it being that strange grey area between the black and white crossover times of the various shifts.

"Hodges." He said, finally entering the trace lab, hoping for something back on the samples that Basderic had arrogantly allowed Russell to collect at the end of the interview.

"I've moved all of Sara's stuff up to the top of my pile, I'm just waiting for the results now."

"Anything so far?" Nick asked hopefully.

"So far everything's come up clean for any biological, they were priority, Henry kicked the stuff over to me after that, not much to report I'm afraid."

"OK, did you find GSR on anything, that would get us a warrant for his house which is really what we need." Nick muttered, distractedly, thinking about what this could mean. Basderic was clever, and he had given everything up too easily, he must have known, or at least suspected that everything was going to come up clean.

"Nothing on his clothes, but inspiration struck. I knew he was a slippery one, after everything with the waitress and Frank's and crazy people are usually paranoid and-"

"Hodges, if this is the extent of your inspirational powers you're not filling me with hope." Nick broke in sharply

"I'm testing his watch, he'll have been clever enough to clean his clothes and hands but I figured, creature of habit, probably missed the watch when he showered..."

"That's brilliant Hodges." Nick breathed, genuinely impressed.

"Thank you...You're not the only one that cares about her you know Nick."

This startled him a little but he recovered quickly and hastily said, "I know that..."

"How is she?"

"I don't know...She says she's fine but-"

"But she could have been in a hit and run with her insides dragged along the length of The Strip and she'd still tell you that."

"Exactly...I think she's holding it together, Grissom's helping, hopefully he'll be able to get her to rest..."

"What about Grissom? How's he dealing with this?"

"I didn't see him for that long but...He loves her, he'll do whatever it takes, whatever she needs, but who can tell what that man really thinks about anything." Nick sighed,

"That man is to us as Russia was to Churchill..." Hodges said poetically.

Nick raised his eyebrows, "A riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma." He said, quoting Churchill's words about Russia during the Cold War.

Nick smiled slightly and said, "Grissom I could just about figure out most of the time...That one's more appropriate for Sara, thirteen years and I think I'd still probably struggle to tell you her favourite colour."

"I'd guess blue..."

Fortunately at that point the printer chose to spare Nick from what was turning into a very awkward conversation by spitting out their results.

"I know what my new favourite colour is." He smirked, showing him the results.

"Green..GSR on his watch? Hodges you're a genius." Nick said, delighted as he hurried from the trace lab.

"It's taken you ten years to figure that out!?"

...

Greg was quietly padding through the lab, unlike Nick he was not seeking results, simply reassurance in the consuming, haunting silence of the lab.

He too had gone home, at Russell's insistence, but after showering and changing he found that he was too on edge and full of adrenaline either to eat or to sleep.

_You'll turn into Sara if you're not careful..._He thought quietly to himself as he wandered aimlessly around the glass maze of corridors, his feet taking him places that his brain only registered minutes later.

He had been struggling with this entire case and wanted nothing more than it to be over. He still remembered Nick's phone call, telling him what had happened to Sara.

He and Morgan had been sent to process Wynard's room after other, more dramatic events had caused Russell and Nick to abandon it after a brief walkthrough. He had wanted to go straight to the hospital to see Sara but Russell had assured them that she was fine and Nick swore that he would call and let him know the second she woke up. He had done that, and while concerned at the position she had put herself in, Greg reasoned that the thing he could do to be of most use to Sara was to process the room and find proof that she had had nothing to do with his death.

They had been there for about two hours when Nick called again,

"Greg." He sounded shaky and sick and Greg immediately jumped to the worst conclusions, imaging any number of horrific things that could have befallen since they had last spoken.

"Nick! What's happened?" he asked,

"It's Sara..." he said, quietly

"My God, but you said that the doctor's gave her the all clear." He said, accusingly, terrified.

"They did..." Nick said, struggling to tell him what had happened,

"Then what's the problem? Nick what's wrong, is she OK?"

"No Greg, she's not." Nick's voice broke and he was unable to continue,

"Nick-" Greg began, cautiously not sure if he would want the answer but knowing that he needed to hear it

"I...This isn't something you should hear over the phone Greg."

"No way, no you're not just leaving it at that Nick, you tell me what the Hell's happened or I swear to God-"

"She's been raped Greg."

"Oh God...Oh please Nick, tell me you didn't just say-"

"I'm sorry Greg, I, she just-"

"Who was it? Was it that bastard Wynard."

"Yes...We found evidence that she'd slept with him, we asked her about it, she remembered what he had done to her."

"My God...Is she still at the lab? I'm coming back-"

"No, Greg-"

"Don't you 'no Greg' me, I love that girl, I'm not going to sit here and wait like a good little boy while she's going through Hell, Russell can go and screw himself-" he began hotly,

"No, Greg, it's not Russell, he hasn't said you should stay but I think you should...She's in a really bad place Greg, Finn's taking her home."

"It shouldn't be Finn...It should be someone she knows, someone she trusts."

"That's just the thing Greg, at the minute that's not us...She doesn't know what's happened to her, her heads all over the place, she wouldn't let anyone else near her..."

"What...Not even you?"

"No..."

"Jesus Nick, I'm sorry.

"No it's OK...I just, I don't want you coming back here and doing what I'm doing, bouncing off walls...I thought you would want to keep busy."

"Yeah...Yeah thanks."

"Can you tell Morgan?"

"Oh...Yeah, yeah I'll...Yeah I'll tell her, thanks Nick, keep me up to date."

"Of course..."

They had hung up then, both of them feeling hollow and empty inside. Greg had then had to tell Morgan. She had reacted as he had expected, sinking to the ground in shock and trembling. Greg was glad that she was there, it gave him a reason not to do exactly the same thing and just fall apart...

He ended up in the locker room, dark and silent as it always was, 'filled with mysteries' as Lindsay had put it when she was younger. God, Catherine. She still didn't know, they had tried to get in touch with her, but without success, they had been told that she was on a week's holiday, abroad, probably why she wasn't answering at the ridiculous times they would have called her at.

He sank onto the bench sinking. The locker room was, as Sara often pointed out, better than several drinks in a crowded casino for taking the edge off. It was nice to be able to sit in the cool, enveloping silence, the room had seen and heard it's fair share of tales, it did not judge, it did not question or patronize, it just understood and allowed you to forget, if only for a minute, the mad world you wondered why you had become involved in.

"Penny for them?" a voice from the door way said,

"You might need a few pennies..." he sighed, before realising who it was, "Jesus!" he gasped, jumping to his feet,

"No, just me." She said, a small smile playing about her lips.

"Sara, what are you doing here?" he cried, hurrying towards her, he saw the panic in her eyes a little too late as she backed away and said,

"Don't." Without thinking.

"Sara...It's me..." he said softly, though he obeyed and stopped a few feet from her,

"I know...I know Greg but I just, I just can't I, I'm sorry..."

"It's OK, it's alright." He said, soothingly, understanding, she was not rejecting him, merely the thought of him initiating contact between them, and thereby removing her of her control. "What are you doing here Sara? You should be at home." He said gently,

"Yeah, well insomnia's a wonder and watching paint dry has never really been my thing so..." she said quietly,

"What about Grissom?" Greg asked softly

"He understands...He knew that I had to...I had to _do_ something..." she said, "I think he knows what I want more than I do at the moment..."

"Hey, you'll get through this, you know that right?" he said, taking another step towards her and placing a hand on her arm.

She flinched as though burned, "Greg." She said, warningly, panic flaring in her chest.

There had been a reason for her insomnia. She had been unable to shake the violent images that flashed, sickeningly before her every time she had dared to close her eyes. Grissom had recognised that this was doing her more harm than good and had suggested that she go for a drive to clear her head. Her head had then taken her back to the lab.

She was frustrated beyond belief and knew that Greg would be hurt by her rejection, especially considering how she had been able to respond to Grissom and Nick but it wasn't Greg it was him. He was inside her head, and under her skin and had made her feel more vulnerable than she had done, curled on the sofa. Still Greg would not see that and she hated the fact that she was pushing him away when she had come for him.

"How can he do this to me Greg?" she screamed, dissolving into tears in his arms, as she sank to the floor and he helplessly hovered around her before instinctively putting his arms around her. She yelped as her stomach touch, the reassuring touch of someone who had become like a brother to her being transformed into the cruel, cold touch of the monster she knew was dead.

"I'm sorry Greg, I'm so sorry..." she choked as she rocked back and forth on the cold tiled floor,

"You don't need to apologise to me Sara, I understand...Do you want me to get someone?"

"No, no don't leave me, don't go please, stay, please stay, please."

"OK, it's OK, I'm here, I'm not going anywhere, I promise."

She reached out and found his hand, he held onto it like life itself as she gradually came closer towards him, reintroducing her body to his touch, refusing to allow Wynard to dictate how she lived her life.

"He can't do this to me Greg...He's used me as much as he's ever going to, I won't let him do this to me..."

"I know you won't...Sara Sidle, the only woman in history ever to argue with a dead man and come out victorious."

She found herself laughing uncontrollably as her hysteria and exhaustion took hold of her, by this point she had sidled closer to him and was pressed against his warm side as he gave her hand a squeeze as her breathing returned to normal, the old fire burning in her eyes from grim determination, "You OK?" he asked softly,

"I'm fine Greg." She said with a small, sad smile that told him she wasn't, and she knew it.

A/N: I know that the plot might feel a little neglected at the minute but I've only recently discovered the opportunity written characters give you to explore and dissect their feelings and I thought that Greg deserved this as well, he's known Sara just as long as Nick has and doesn't care about her any less, so you'll forgive me my few digressions at the moment. I'll start balancing plot and character development again or hey if that doesn't float your boat we'll just forget about it, bring on the shrink and sit and talk about our feelings :) Let me know how this went, as I said, I haven't done Greg before so I hope this was OK. It's quite difficult to have her reactions being realistic without continuously repeating myself so I hope this worked out alright.


	12. The Grateful Dead

**Chapter 12**

The Grateful Dead

Nick hurried into PD looking for Vartann, instead he found Brass.

"Nick!"

"Jim."

"Nick what's happened? Sara?"

"No-one's told you?"

"No, I just landed, Nick what's going on?"

"Come on, in here." Nick said, hastily pulling Brass into an empty interview room and perching on the table, "I don't really know how to tell you..."

"Do it in whatever way suits you Nick, I don't care if it's one word or bloody 'War and Peace' just tell me something."

"OK, alright, you dropped Sara back off at PD then...We found evidence that she had slept with her victim."

"No." Brass said, instantly rejecting this. "She wouldn't do that, not willingly...Not, Nick, God no..." he said, putting two and two together faster than Nick or any other CSI could, cop's instinct overtaking any physical evidence, he was making this exceptionally easy for Nick who could only bring himself to nod wordlessly, "That bastard." Brass breathed,

"I know..." Nick murmured, unable to say anything else.

"All I'll say is, he's lucky he's already dead." Brass growled darkly, he was overly protective of everyone on the CSI team, but particularly Sara; she was like a daughter to him and Hell mend anyone who threatened her.

"You're right there." Nick muttered, who had similar feelings towards Taylor Wynard.

"What does this mean for her?" Brass asked, "How does it affect the murder charge?"

"It's balanced on a knife edge at the moment...They've given us twenty four hours to prove she's innocent or they'll arrest her."

"Who's 'they' Nick?" Brass asked grimly,

"Samuel Crawford, you know him?"

"Oh that heartless bastard." Brass growled, "We've met...You'd think she'd been through enough..."

"Yeah, well fortunately we got lucky...We think she's being set-up."

"Really? By whom?"

"You remember Ronald Basderic, he was involved in the case-"

"At Frank's diner, stalking Edie Graham, I remember...You think it's him?"

"Yes. We found proof that he had paid Taylor to sleep with Sara, he denies pushing him in to rape, but given Wynard's past and the thirty thousand dollars he transferred into his account it wouldn't really have taken much provocation...We also found GSR on his watch, that could place him in the hotel room, I'm looking for a sympathetic judge to get me a warrant for his house now."

"I think I can help you out there, I've still got a few favours I can call in."

...

"How did it come to this?" Morgan sighed, sipping the coffee as Finn slid back into their booth after placing their order at the counter.

"I know...There's just one thing I'm having trouble with..." Finn sighed

"What do you mean?" Russell asked, surveying her over the rim of his own coffee cup.

"It just strikes me as unusual for Basderic; it doesn't fit with his MO."

"I think it does..." Russell said, grimly, "It's all psychological terror, with Edie he was stalking her, she was terrified to leave her house or her workplace for fear of seeing him every time she looked over her shoulder, in the end, that contributed to her death...This is just an extension of the same thing, there's more than one way to hurt a woman and he picked the one that would cause her the most pain mentally, rape isn't physical, it's psychological. The after effects of that, combined with the frame up for murder, throw in a little rohypnol and you've got the perfect insanity cocktail..."

"Poor Sara..." Morgan breathed, "I don't know how she's going to get through this..."

"She will." Finn said, quietly, she had seen Sara at her most vulnerable, terrified and in agony, but she had also seen her defiance and knew that she would not surrender to him without a fight, "She's strong, and she has us, we'll get her through this, one way or the other."

"And we can start by finding out what happened for her. What we know already is that Sara's prints were found on the gun, which was found in her suite..."

"Would she have been in any condition to hide the gun?" Finn asked, "And if she was, she's a CSI, surely she would have wiped it..."

"I agree, this doesn't fit with Sara having been the killer, we recovered her clothes from the hospital, the night of the attack, they had been washed but there was no trace of blood or GSR, still doesn't prove much, however now our job is to find out which direction to turn."

"My money's on Basderic." Finn said, through gritted teeth.

"What do we have on him already?" Morgan asked,

"GSR, found on his watch."

"That's a good start."

"Easy, it proves he fired a gun, it doesn't prove what it was pointed at."

"It proves he lied." She snarled, "If that son-of-a-bitch is guilty, if he set her up...I will not be responsible for my actions."

"OK, OK, hold it there, see it's talk like that that gets you in trouble-"Russell began,

"I don't care, I don't care what I have to do, how many people I piss off in the process, he is not getting away with this, not while there's still air in my lungs." Finn growled,

"I know, I feel exactly the same way, but we have to play this smart, we have to use our brains not our mouths to fix this, Nick's gone down to PD to see if anyone can get us a warrant for Basderic's house, he should be getting back to me soon."

They talked quietly for another fifteen minutes, during which time their food arrived, half-way their conversation, Russell's phone went,

"Nick, how's it going?" he listened for a second before nodding and saying, "OK good, you can handle it?" a second pause then, "Right, keep me up to date."

"Brass found a judge to grant us a warrant, he Nick and Greg are on their way to Basderic's apartment now."

"Good, hopefully they find something to nail the bastard; he's nowhere near as clever as he thinks."

...

Nick and Greg stood quietly in Basderic's hallway, examining the clinical rooms around them. Everything had its place, and nothing was out of it. Everything matched and would have given the impression of a stylish home if it hadn't been done with such military precision that made the house feel like more of a prison.

"I don't think we're going to be finding any bloodstained clothes strewn over the floor..." Greg murmured,

"No...Let's have a quick scan and see what we can find...We need something."

They split up and began systematically moving through the house. It almost felt as though touching anything in the house was something close to criminal...Nick was examining the coffee table, the coasters arranged in a pattern stacked on top of one another, white, black, white, black, when Greg called, "What do you have?" he asked, slipping down the stairs into the small basement room below.

Greg did not answer, and he did not need to, Nick swore softly as he too descended into the pit of Basderic's obsession. The room was small by comparison to the rest of the house but it was full of images of one person. One woman. Sara.

However he had been clever, all of the images had been sourced from news paper clippings, stills from news reels, none of it showed evidence that he had been physically stalking her, although he must have been.

"Bastard..." Nick breathed,

"This has to get us something..."

"It won't stand up in court, not to a murder charge, a set-up, nothing like that..." Nick murmured,

"No, but it will stand up to Crawford and that's what's important right now..." Greg said,

"Right..." Nick said, turning and examining the bookshelf in the small room, "None of this matches the books upstairs..." he said, slowly,

Greg approached, "Forensics texts, crime novels...William Blake...Sara." Greg said, more horrified by this than anything else, "How does he know that? Nick, this could have come straight from her house, how does he know?"

Nick had removed one of the William Blake texts from the shelf, noticing that it had been hastily stuffed in at an odd angle, in contrast with the perfect symmetry of the rest of the house. Riffling through the pages they stopped and looked at each other and something slipped from between them.

Bending down Greg retrieved the thin card that had slid from the book's protective clutches.

"This we can use..." he said grimly, holding it out for Nick's inspection. It was the key card for Sara's room at The Tangiers.

At that point Nick's phone rang,

"Russell, yes we're at the house now, I can't give you a vial of Taylor's blood as proof but he has Sara's key card stashed in his little shrine- What did you say?" Nick paused, "You have to be kidding me...They let that bastard go?" he snarled, flinging the book across the room in frustration where it lay staring innocently up at them as Nick fumed.

...

"They let him go..." she whispered, pressing the phone against her lips.

"I know." He murmured,

"Why would they do that?"she breathed. She knew perfectly well why they had done it, he had been treated to the hospitality of the LVPD for too long, they could not hold him for longer without formally charging him and clearly they had not had enough to do so.

She felt sick. Basderic had done nothing to hurt her, not directly anyway. She had no reason to feel this way, no reason to feel so threatened, and yet, she did...

"This man has put you in this position, everything you've been through in the last few days, he's been behind it, it's understandable that you feel this way." He said, knowing what connections her brain was struggling to make and helping to fill in the blanks.

Greg had dropped her off a few hours ago, before leaving with Nick for Basderic's apartment, refusing to allow her to drive herself home 'in her condition'. She had resented this on a number of levels but she had allowed it to keep him happy and also, though she would never openly admit it, the sensible part of her knew he was right. She was out of her depth, she knew it, she just could not allow herself to.

"Listen, I made a few calls, to a friend while you were out. They'll be here in the morning..." he said, softly, planting a soft kiss on the top of her head and a hot water bottle into her hands.

"Gil..." she said warningly, "I told you, no shrinks..."

"It's not a psychologist."

"Well then what is 'it'?" she asked, with contempt, Nick and Greg were one thing but she was not about to go sharing her intimate thoughts and feelings with a complete stranger, particularly in light of what had happened the last time she had tried this.

"Someone who will help." He said quietly,

"Gil I-"

"Do you trust me?" he murmured, quietly, cutting across her,

She looked steadily into the eyes she knew so well, eyes that she did trust, eyes that she would follow to the ends of the Earth and breathed, "Intimately."

A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing, hope you enjoyed!


	13. Keep Your Friends Close

**Chapter 13**

Keep Your Friends Close

Sara was padding quietly around the apartment, Hank trotting faithfully at her heels as she circled pointlessly. She had been awake since half past two, it was now half past six and in that time she had succeeded in showering, trying to eat, drinking enough tea to overdose, attempting, and failing to read, work, watch television, listen to music and write, she had given up and had been pacing, restlessly round the room for the last half an hour.

Finally, she flopped into a chair by one of the windows and stared out at it, the early morning light casting her figure into shadow, silhouetted against the long, thin pane of glass.

"How long have you been awake?" a voice asked behind her,

"A while..." she replied, quietly, she did not jump, she had heard him getting up.

He in turn was not surprised to find her in the chair. While it was less so when he was home he had become used to his wife's habits during her regular bouts of insomnia. She had never been the heaviest of sleepers, but the combination of hard cases and childhood trauma meant that, for as long as she could remember, a month had not gone by without at least one sleepless three day period.

"What was it?" he asked, quietly, cautiously placing his hands on her hips, sometimes she liked to talk, sometimes she didn't, but he always gave her the option.

She allowed the contact and replied, "The usual...With a modern twist..."

He gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze and said, "What do you want for breakfast?"

"I'm not hungry..."

"It's non-optional."

She smiled slightly, "Whatever you feel like...I'm going to get dressed."

He allowed her to leave, as he entered the kitchen leaving Hank torn as to who he should follow, the big dog had been ridiculously protective of Sara over the past few days and rarely left her side for more than a few minutes at a time, meaning that she had had to accompany to the kitchen before he would consent to eat, however his mind was made up for him when she deliberately closed the bedroom door on him with a stern look, meaning that he then trotted after Grissom.

"What are we going to do?" he murmured quietly,

At that point there was a knock at the door that could only belong to one person. Smiling slightly, he went to the door and pulled it open, allowing their visitor to enter without a word.

"How is she?"

"...Surviving."

"As usual then."

"Indeed..She's getting dressed."

"And you're making her breakfast?"

"And force feeding her if necessary."

He led her to the sofa and allowed her to settle, she patted Hank's silky head before Grissom asked, "Would you like anything, tea, coffee?"

"I'd like you to leave..."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Yes."

"...I'll go, but not right now, I'll wait until she's seen you first?"

"You think she'll want me to go?"

"I think it's a distinct possibility, she doesn't know what she wants right now..."

"Hardly surprising."

"No..."

He continued making breakfast until the door opened and the two people in the living room froze and glanced towards the woman framed in the doorway. She looked at her husband first before turning to their visitor who had cautiously half-risen from the sofa. Sara paused for a moment before walking towards her and pulling her into a tight hug, "Hey Cath..." she breathed as the other woman held onto her and nodded to Grissom. He smiled slightly, called to Hank and quietly left the apartment.

"You holding it together?" the older woman asked, leading her back to the sofa,

"Just about..."

"I'm sorry Sara..."

"Me too...I take it your Grissom's 'friend'." She said, with a small smile,

"It certainly looks that way...He wasn't sure if you would want me around."

"Of course I would...I would have called you too, if I'd called anyone."

Catherine smiled, sadly at the throw back to the time she had woken up, naked and terrified in a motel room, she had escaped the fate that the younger woman had endured however, but it had still been Sara she had called, trusting her to keep her head and her discretion in the crisis. She was touched that the private brunette trusted her in the same manner. "I hope you don't think I'm here to tell you how to deal with this."

"I wouldn't expect you to...If you understand anything about this, I know you wouldn't...There's no quick fix for this, and everyone deals with it differently, it's not something you can teach someone..."

"Sara, feel free to tell me to mind my own damn business, but you're sounding more like the voice of experience on this than me..."

"Yeah..." she murmured, trying to decide how much she wanted to tell the other woman.

"Have you...Has this happened to you _before?" _Catherine breathed, horrified,

"A while ago..." she murmured,

Catherine knew better than to push it, "Grissom made pancakes."

"And I take it he's told you to pin me down and force feed me."

"I don't need Gil Grissom to tell me to do that, come on." She said, firmly.

"So, how has it been being 'Agent Willows'?" she asked, grinning as Catherine rooted around in the cupboards for syrup, _make yourself at home..._

"Weird." She said, pulling a face,

"Good weird?"

"...I don't know." She said, with a laugh, "Just weird...I still miss you all...And it's just nowhere near as interesting as Vegas..."

"Nowhere is as interesting as Vegas." Sara said with a laugh. She needed this, she needed someone to stop treating her like a dying bird and treat her like a human being again. Catherine understood this, knew that, just because she had been raped did _not _mean that she needed to be wrapped in cotton wool, to delicate to hold down a normal conversation.

"How is the rest of the team doing? Nicky and Greg?"

"Nick's still the soft-centred Texan with the big heart and the bigger mouth..Greg's still the geeky lab tech with the crazy hair." She said, with a smile, seeing the other woman's eyes light up, "You _have _missed this."

"I guess so..."

"Would you ever come back?"

"I don't know...I might, under the right circumstances, but not just now..." she said, wistfully, smiling sadly, "By the way, who did they get to replace me?"

"You're acknowledging that they could ever replace the great Catherine Willows?" she teased,

"No, I'm acknowledging that they could try." She replied instantly with a wolfish grin,

"Julie Finlay, an old colleague of Russell's from Seattle." Sara said, with a smile,

"What's she like?"

"You on steroids." Sara smiled and watched Catherine's face blanche before saying, "She's great at her job, knows what she wants and takes it, stubborn, strong-willed, bit of a loose canon"

"She reminds me of someone..." Catherine said with a smirk

"Me? No...Finn's in a different league..." she chuckled, "She's different, but she fits..."

"That's good." Catherine murmured quietly,

"What about you? Do you fit?"

"I think so..."

"I'll bet you do, FBI was made for you." Sara said, with a smirk.

"What does that mean?" Catherine said in mock indignation, grinning since she knew perfectly well what Sara meant.

Sara smiled and didn't answer, saying instead, "How's Lindsay doing?"

"Good, she's great, I was down visiting her actually, she's got a modelling job in Florida actually."

"Oh God, Cath, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were-"

"Hey, hey, don't start that." Catherine said, firmly, "Heaven help them if anyone did that to me, you'd have hi-jacked a plane to get to me if it was the other way around...You're family Sara, nothing is more important than that, not to me, I would have moved Heaven and Earth to get here."

"I know... And I'm glad you did." She murmured, showing the first sign of vulnerability since the other woman had arrived, Catherine picked up on this and smiled sadly as she reached across the table and took Sara's hands in both of her own.

* * *

"Morgan!"

"Dad..." she murmured, relieved,

Hurried footsteps were her only warning before she was enveloped in a warm embrace that was as welcome as it was strange.

Less than a year ago, the thought of being this close to him, physically and emotionally, would have repulsed her, now he offered her more comfort than anyone else in the lab in light of recent events.

"I just heard I came as soon as I could...How are you all doing?"

"We're OK..." she said, in a small voice, "We're just trying to be strong for her."

"I just got back, I've been stuck in meetings with the mayor, shut up in one of these damn casinos all week, this was the first chance I had to get your messages." He explained hurriedly,

"It's OK...What have you managed to find out?"

"It doesn't look good for her, I won't lie to you, Crawford's still calling for her arrest, I think Russell's done everything he can for now."

"He can't! You can't let him do this to her." She said, terrified of the potential consequences of Sara's arrest, every fibre of her being rejecting it, especially considering what had already happened to her.

"I may not have a choice Morgan but-"

"Look, I know about the history between the two of you, but you can't want this for her-" Morgan began hotly, exhaustion and fear making her mouth say things her brain did not agree with

"Of course I don't!" he snarled, "You can't seriously think that." The extent of his anger showed her how much she had overstepped, he had been overly-protective and attentive to her since their reunion in Vegas, this was the only time he had lost his temper with her, "Sara and I have had our differences over the years, both of us would be fighting to be first to admit that, but believe it or not I care about her as much as anyone else in here." He hissed, "I wouldn't wish this on anyone, least of all a friend-" he caught himself and took a deep breath giving her the opportunity to interject, saying,

"I'm sorry, I know, I didn't mean that..."

"It's OK...And besides, "he said, looking uncomfortable, "She's a brilliant CSI, I'll never replace her, the lab needs her." He said, a small smile tugging at his lips, she smiled too as he continued, "So, whatever the consequence, I'm going to Crawford, so I hope to God you have something for me to feed him with."

"I do." She said, also smiling, "Nick and Greg just called, they found evidence that Basderic's been obsessed with Sara for a while, and they also found Sara's key card in his apartment."

"How did he get a hold of that?"

"Not sure, we're still processing, but it should be enough to give Crawford something to chew on in the meantime."

"It should, come on..."

"Dad..." she said, quietly,

"What?" he asked, turning to face her

"Thank you..."

* * *

"Doc, sorry it's taken me this long to get down here, we've been slammed." Russell said, as he hurried into the autopsy room,

"Understandable considering...How is she?" he asked,

"About what you can expect I mean...I don't really think that there's much I can say, I doubt she could tell you herself, but she'll get through this..."

"I'm sure she will...If you can say anything about Sara Sidle it's that she's award winningly stubborn, she won't let him beat her, not like this." He murmured,

"Well, first step to recovery is closing this case for her, what can you tell me."

"One thing I know for sure is that everyone on this team would believe this man's death was altogether too pleasant." Robbins said, grimly, "Bullet to the chest, went straight to his heart, killed him instantly...Bastard didn't feel a thing."

Russell was at first surprised by this. Robbins could usually be counted on to be completely objective and impassive and it was unusual for the usual mild-mannered doctor to speak this way, however Russell then reminded himself that Robbins had known Sara for thirteen years and the two of them had always been close. He had just as much right as anyone else to be appalled by what this man had done to her, and his hatred was completely justifiable.

"Alright, COD's not a mystery, anything else you can tell me?"

"I'm not sure if it will help Sara but it was a close contact wound...Very close, the gun would have been pressed directly against his chest, slight upward angle, whoever it was was up close and personal with our victim, bruises to his upper back indicate that they held onto him."

"Well I'm not sure I'd be too impressed with someone pressing a gun to my chest, I would have struggled..." Russell said, lost in thought that Robbins knew better than to interrupt, "So his killer restrained him, at least long enough to put a bullet in his chest...And we already know that he was able to overpower Sara."

"Indeed, not without a fight however." Robbins said, with some satisfaction, "His body's peppered in cuts and bruises, she did not willingly allow him to do that..."

"Good girl..." Russell breathed, examining the deep scratches and bruises that covered Wynard's body. "Is that everything Doc?"

"I think so, I've sent a sample of his blood to tox, I don't think it'll get you much...If you see Sara..."

"I'll give her your love."

"Please do, and tell her if she needs anything...I'll do whatever she needs."

"I'll tell her Doc, I will, thank you." Russell said, solemnly, shaking the coroner by the hand as he left.

"Hey David...What have you go there?" Russell asked curiously, his antennae going up at the sight of the little, unassuming flower in the assistant coroners hands.

"It's for Sara...I was going to drop it off after work." He explained, flushing beetroot.

"Cyclamen?" Russell asked, curiously, "Interesting choice,"

They're her favourite...I think I know why..." he said, with a small smile,

"I do too..." Russell said, also smiling, "Hold that thought." He said, as his phone rang.

"Yeah, Russell...He's what?...No, no, I'll tell her myself, that's not something she should hear over the phone...I'll leave now." Russell paused before saying grimly, "If you like I'll drop that off David, I'm heading to Sara's now."

...

There was a gentle tap at the door and Catherine volunteered to get it. Sara didn't think she had ever seen anyone move in so comfortably to a house that did not belong to them, but for once she was glad of the blonde's over-familiarity, she had not needed someone skirting around asking where she kept the sugar, Catherine had slotted comfortably back into her life and had treated her like an adult, acknowledging that she was actually capable of dressing herself and stringing two words together to have a conversation, unlike most everyone else, who seemed to decide that she was in serious danger of falling to pieces if they breathed on her too enthusiastically, she would be eternally grateful to her for that alone.

There were soft words of friendly acknowledgment coming the door as Russell pulled Catherine into a quick hug. Sensing that this was more than a social visit, Sara got to her feet, pulling the thin blanket around her shoulders as Grissom, also realising that something was happening, joined her from the bedroom, gently squeezing her shoulders.

"This is from David, he sends his best." Russell said, with a strained smile, handing her the little white flower. She smiled genuinely for the first time in what felt like months, but then noticing his expression and demeanour set it on the kitchen counter and said,

"I don't think you came here just to give me that."

"No, I didn't."

"What's happened?" she asked, sharply, suddenly concerned, all sorts of horrific, implausible theories flying through her head. What if Basderic had targeted one of the team, Nick or Greg, in order to hurt her, what if he had gone after someone else that she cared about? How would she be able to live with herself knowing that she was responsible?

"Russell, what's happened? Has he hurt someone else?"

"No, I don't think you have to worry about Ronald Basderic any more Sara..."

"What do you mean?"

"He's dead."

A/N: Hopefully that was somewhat unexpected, I hope you like the little twist with Grissom's 'friend' I toyed with Lady Heather but Catherine seemed to make more sense :) Thanks for reading and reviewing!


	14. And Your Enemies Closer

**Chapter 14**

Your Enemies Closer

"What do we know about Basderic's death?" Russell asked, after he returned from Sara's apartment, he had assembled his team.

"That the only reason any of give a damn about his death is because he now can't prove Sara's innocence?" Finn suggested coldly.

"He was found dead in his apartment in the early hours of this morning, bullet to the head entry point through the mouth." Greg said, reading from the preliminary report. The case had been kicked to the graveyard shift after Ecklie had been delicately made aware of their connection by a convincing Russell and a demanding Finn.

"Sounds like a suicide to me." Nick said,

"Doesn't sound like a suicide to me." Said a voice from the door,

"What do you mean?" Several voices said in chorus as Henry entered the layout room.

"Don't shoot the messenger but I'm not entirely sure he would have been capable, it's not impossible, just unlikely."

"Why? What have you found Henry?"

"His blood alcohol was point three one, _several _times the legal limit, and there was traces of flunitrazipam in it."

"He was ruffied?" Morgan asked curiously,

"How appropriate..." Finn replied, callously.

"I found it in the wine glasses that was collected from the scene, no DNA on the second one, but Mandy's running prints now." Henry continued,

"OK, thanks Henry..." Russell said distractedly allowing the timid tech to scuttle back to his lab, relieved to still be in possession of his head.

"It doesn't rule out suicide," Greg pointed out instantly, "High functioning alcoholics would be more than capable of committing suicide like that, it doesn't take much precision."

"It doesn't rule in suicide either, it just makes an already unlikely possibility even more unlikely." Russell said, flatly,

"What about the gun, where was it found?" Morgan asked, before either Greg or Nick could spark off a circular argument in response to Russell's words, as she rifled through the initial crime scene photos spread out on the table in front of them.

"In Basderic's hand, only his prints." Russell said, quietly, fishing out the shot she was looking for.

"Also not ruling out suicide." Finn said,

"There was never any real possibility of it being suicide. Basderic's a control freak and in this case he held all the aces, he wouldn't have killed himself while he was still enjoying deciding how to play them, and the killer seems to be making a statement with his death."

"How do you work that one out?"

"Look at it, the rohypenol, there was no need for that, the gun being clean of anyone but Basderic's prints, the twin wine glasses, I'm getting a sense of déjà vu here, I hope I'm not the only one..."

"None of that points to Sara." Finn breathed, stubbornly

"Look I know what you're doing and I know why, but we have to be objective here-"

"You can be as objective as you like, as far as I'm concerned Sara doesn't come in to this." Nick snarled, "You want to accuse her of _two _murders? She's barely holding it together as it is Russell this-"

"I agree that it's extreme, but she has no alibi and too much motive." He said quietly, though he privately agreed with Nick.

The look on Sara's face when he had informed her of Basderic's death, her terrified whisper of "when?" and the physical and mental collapse he had witnessed when she realised that she could not offer an alibi for the time of his death had more than convinced him that she was innocent. Still he needed his team right now as he was not sure of his own decision making at the moment and needed them to give him perspective.

"There's no way she did this." Nick growled,

"I know that, but we need more than you standing up and intensely informing the jury in court." Russell snapped,

"There's no way this will get to court." Morgan breathed, looking from Nick to Russell,

"Unless we find a very good reason why not, and soon, that's exactly what's going to happen." He continued, grimly, "Ecklie managed to talk him down with what Greg and Nick found at Basderic's apartment but he says it's entirely circumstantial, it doesn't prove he had anything to do with a set-up, never mind murder, he's still after Sara's blood, so heaven help us when he hears about this."

"I may be able to save you from your badge wearing vampire..." A voice said, from the door,

"Mandy, did you find something?" Russell asked, so desperately that, had she not, she would have been tempted to invent something for the sake of his sanity.

"I found two somethings." She said, with a satisfied smile, "The key card Nick and Greg found at Basderic's apartment, had prints belonging to three people, Sara, Basderic and your dead man...Well your _first _dead man, Taylor Wynard..." she gave them a moment to digest this before continuing, "On the wine glass found at your _second _dead man's house I found several useable prints, they belong to this woman." She placed a picture on the table before identifying her, "Laura Cox, she was arrested in 1982 for murder, the case got very complicated but the short of the long is that she's not in prison, you can pick through the report yourselves, I need coffee..." she told them, before leaving them to it.

"You're a gem Mandy." Russell called after her,

"You can even have some of my Blue Hawaiian." Greg added,

"No-one seeks your permission to drink that you know Greg." Her jubilant voice called back

"I recognise her..." Nick muttered, pulling the photograph towards him, his words the only thing that stopped Greg haring off to the break room to print the coffee pot,

"It's her." Greg said, looking and realising that he too recognised the woman in the picture.

"Who are we talking about here?" Finn asked,

"She came forward with evidence pertaining to the case a few days ago." Nick explained, "She put us on to Basderic in the first place, he had manipulated her to get information about Sara."

"Who is she?" Morgan asked,

"She said that she was a friend, she wouldn't give us any names, now we know why...She wanted us to believe her information and knew we wouldn't if we looked up her file and saw this in it." Greg said thoughtfully,

"I think we need to have another chat with the mysterious Ms Cox and find out what she was doing drinking with the dead..." Russell said, quietly.

* * *

"Jesus!" Russell said, jumping as he walked in to his office,

"No, just me...Are you sure those mushrooms are medicinal?" she said, with a smirk, leaning against the desk and watching him carefully.

"Yes." He blustered before getting back to the more pressing matter, "What are you doing here?"

"What do you think?"

"I think you're running yourself into the ground to prove a point..."

"I'm not...You can't just bring me in a little and then leave me out in the cold."

"You are, you're exhausted, running on adrenaline."

"I'm fine-"

"Don't Sara." He snarled, knowing she was lying to him and not in a position to accept it as he usually did, "Are you trying to tell me you slept last night?"

"Would you?" she shot back angrily, before catching herself and saying, more quietly, "Look, I'm not expecting you to hand me my kit and send me back out into the field,"

"Good-"

"I just want to know what's going on...There's been too much in my life these past few days that I've had no control over, and no knowledge of...It's driving me crazy..."

"OK...OK, but first you tell me _honestly _how you are."

"I'm fi-"she caught herself again, with a rueful smile, "I'm dealing with it."

"Are you?" he said, softly,

"Yes...Gil's been wonderful and Catherine," she broke of here with a small laugh, "She drives me crazy but just when I get to the point where I want to throttle her, she does or says something that reminds me why I miss her so much...She's been amazing."

"I'm glad." Russell said with a smile, this he could believe, before he had sent her right back to square one again with his news about Basderic, he could see the difference that Catherine had made, she looked brighter and happier, whatever Catherine had done, as far as Russell was concerned, she was one miracle short of being a saint..

"Just...Please tell me, what's happening."

He considered her for a moment before saying, "We have a suspect, we found fingerprints on a wine glass in Basderic's apartment, we got a hit in AFIS..." he paused before deciding to find out how honest this woman had been and flicking open her file, showing Sara, "Her name is Laura Cox." Sara glanced at the file, her expression gave nothing away, "She said she was a friend of yours?" he pushed, gently,

"Yes..." Sara said, quietly, "Are you interviewing her?" she asked, softly,

Russell paused a moment and then said, "Yes..."

"We should go and watch...Kill two birds with one stone..."

Russell hesitated and then realised that, with or without approval, this is what she was going to do, "Fine, on one condition..."

"What's that?" she asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously,

"I drive." He said, smiling

* * *

Brass entered the interview room with Nick at his heels, the file of the woman sitting, staring calculatingly up at him, open in his hand,

"Laura Cox?" he clarified,

"Congratulations Captain, I can see that all those years of the fine education that this country provided you with were not completely wasted, you can read." She replied, drily,

"Yes, yes I can, and what I've read tells me that you're a murderer." Brass shot back without missing a beat, taking a seat beside Nick at the table opposite her.

"Not according to a jury of my peers."

Brass watched her through narrowed eyes, "Alright, OK, let's start with something simpler, what are you doing in Vegas Ms Cox?" he said, deciding to return to that point later,

She allowed the change of topic, moving with it easily as she replied in a heartbeat, "Why does anyone come to Vegas? To hide my sins."

"And what sins are they?" Nick asked, quietly,

"Don't play dumb with me, it doesn't suit you." She said, sharply, "I'm sure you know."

"Well you won't mind confirming it for me, even with my 'fine education' that gives me the ability to read it, I'm still not entirely sure I trust what I see on paper, the real thing's far better."

"That's a good way to be in this world, no faith in humanity, trust gone, I can see it in your eyes...Man after my own heart Captain..." she paused a moment before deciding, "I was referred to Desert Palms as part of an alcoholism programme recommended to me by my doctor...Patronising idiot...I agreed to go partly to get rid of him and partly because of the sheer irony of it...Alcohol programme in Vegas, the city that created so many of those problems trying to fix them..."

"Indeed...But you've been trying to fix some problems of your own, haven't you Ms Cox?" Nick said, quietly, finally managing to get a word in edgeways in the no-man's land of this war of wits.

She turned her gaze on him properly for the first time, and again he had that naked feeling of having her look straight through him to the secrets buried beneath layers of protective barriers, stripping them away with ease, she would make a phenomenal poker player, however all she said was, "I'm sure you have a theory, and I'm beginning to tire of playing cat and mouse Enlighten me."

"You were trying to fix this..." Nick said, grimly, spreading graphic crime scene photos on the table in front of them,

"Problem solved?" Brass enquired mildly.

"You tell me Captain...We both know you had as much reason to want this man dead as I did." She said, watching him for his reaction.

"My fingerprints weren't found on a wine glass in his apartment." He shot back

"Pesky things these fingerprints..." she murmured softly, "They get everywhere...I had dinner in a fancy restaurant with a few friends the other day, I had the sea bass, lovely, in the meantime, my fingerprints ended up everywhere...Had there been a crime committed there, they would have 'incriminated' me in the same way and you would have hauled me in here for questioning about whether or not I noticed my waiter's choice of deodorant."

"What's your point?" Nick growled, also beginning to tire of her mind games.

"My point is that it doesn't prove in, my finger prints are as irrelevant as sea bass and waiters, it's circumstantial at best and probably less than that considering the fact I've already told you that I enjoyed the 'pleasure' of Mr Basderic's company..."

"Why didn't you drink any of the wine he had the 'pleasure' of serving you?" Nick murmured, changing tact.

"Weren't you paying attention earlier? I wasn't in Vegas attending a wine tasting event, for a trained investigator, you may want to brush up on your listening skills, they can tell you so much." She snapped, irritably.

"I don't think my listening skills are the problem here, I think it's your logic. Maybe you didn't drink the wine because you'd already spiked the bottle."

"Ah yes, the infamous 'maybe' loved by judges and juries in courts up and down the country." She snarled.

"Well you would know all about that wouldn't you Ms Cox? The ins and outs of judges and juries would have become very familiar to you after the time you'd spent in court with them following your husband falling victim to your problem solving skills." Brass said coldly, "What did you think 'hey, I got away with it once, shouldn't be too much harder second time around'?"

She turned away from him in disgust, shaking her head slightly, "You know nothing...Do you have any idea why I 'got away with it'? No, you couldn't because you could never understand what the judges and juries did..." she trailed off slightly, without leaving an opening for either of them to speak, her words as captivating as the mystery that surrounded her, a strange emotion shining in her haunted eyes, "It's a sad day isn't it Captain? When the world we live in and the system we're all caught up in allows him to die a victim, while I get dragged through it by the hair..._I _was the criminal, _I _who had suffered so much at his hands and still...That bastard didn't deserve so much as a funeral, never mind an investigation into his death...After all those years, I'd _earned _it, I'd earned the right to do whatever the fuck l I wanted to him and damn the consequences...He deserved it...It didn't take much to convince the jury of that fact...What he had done to me, I could have lived with...But what he had done to my daughter? Never...Once, when she was eight years old, he beat her, so brutally, that he fractured three of her ribs, he warned her that for every person she told, he would break one of her fingers, and rape me, making her watch...She walked around for two days in agony until a rib punctured her lung and she was rushed to hospital...He put his eight year old daughter in a position whereby she almost killed herself to protect me... I couldn't let her do that any more...I don't think you would have done that had it been your daughter but if you think you could, then you sit there, and you tell me that I murdered my husband and I'll tell you that I protected myself and my daughter and that my only regret is not doing it sooner..."

"...We'll need you to fill out a statement explaining your fingerprints and detailing the extent of your involvement with Mr Basderic..." Brass murmured softly, looking at this woman with new perspective and feeling physically sick that any man could do that to a child, to _his _child...

* * *

"Do you believe it?" Russell asked, turning quietly to Sara, who was frozen in the same position she had been in since the beginning of the interview.

"Which bit?" she asked, a trace of bitterness in her voice

Russell sighed and shook his head saying, "I don't want to believe it...How could anyone do that to a child?"

"I do believe it...Done with more ease than should ever be made public." She whispered, a strange edge to her voice.

"You OK?" he asked, picking up on this, domestic violence was always a sensitive subject with her, even he knew that, but there seemed to be more to it this time.

"Yes...In answer to your first question, I do...I don't think she's guilty."

"You seem pretty sure about that."

"I am."

"You seem pretty sure about her too..."

"I should be..."

"Why?" he asked, suddenly feeling concerned about the answer she might give in her current condition, and although it was not the one he had expected, it still left him staring at her, open-mouthed as she left the room, an intense feeling of horror settling on his stomach as he watched Brass handing her a pen and paper behind the two-way glass, only know fully understanding the extent of the woman's statement, Sara's words ringing in his ears,

"She's my mother..."

A/N: Hopefully this chapter was OK, I know that some people figured out who she was but hopefully you still thought that the reveal was well done...I think I might understand now why the writer's have kept her from us for all this time, I could _not _decide how I wanted to portray her so fingers crossed this came off OK, as ever, delighted to hear your thoughts, especially on this chapter! You're reviews are greatly appreciated.


	15. Insanity Cocktail

**Chapter 15**

Insanity Cocktail

She rose quietly from the desk and made her way to the door. She had signed everything they had wanted her to, admitted to everything they had asked and now she could leave. Finally. The small interrogation rooms favoured by police departments never got any easier to deal with. She had lived too much of her life trapped within four walls and claustrophobia had been something she had suffered with for some time.

She walked quietly from the room and down the corridor, having already told the officers she had wrapped around her little finger that she did not need their assistance in finding her way out. As she rounded the corner she stop at the sight of the slim, dark haired young woman who was watching her, her tormented brown eyes fixed upon her, long arms crossed protectively across her chest.

"Sara." She murmured, moving forwards and gently embracing her daughter.

She could see behind her a tall man with clouds of white hair watching them attentively but he did not say anything, and made no attempts to approach them, and so she refocused on her daughter who had by now broken their embrace.

"What have you done?" she whispered tightly, watching her face carefully for her reaction.

"Nothing."

"Don't lie to me...I can tell, I could always tell."

She paused, "Can we go elsewhere?" she asked, quietly,

She watched her daughter's face soften slightly at this and she said, "Sure...Where are you staying?"

Concealing her hurt that her daughter still refused to give her an all-access pass to her life she said, "The Bellagio, you want to go there?"

She nodded, "I'll drive."

Sara led the way to the car park, ignoring the curious glances of her co-workers. It had been a mistake to tell Russell, ever since she had come to Vegas; she had spent all of her time here concealing who she was and who she had been from her colleagues. She had found this increasingly difficult as the years went by but she had always told herself that she had no reason to tell them, that they had no need to know. Now she found herself divulging secrets left right and centre, obliquely telling Catherine what her father had done to her all those years ago and now telling Russell that their latest murder suspect was her mother..._Fantastic..._

There was no way she would be able to keep this quiet now. Once again, her mother's secrets were coming back to haunt her...

It would have been easy to hate the woman beside her, had they not suffered through the ordeal together and had it not been her who had sacrificed everything to end it. But she would be lying if she said there was no resentment there. She had lived her entire life hiding from secrets that were not hers. Secrets that would tear people apart and had had a good go with her, only to find them resurfacing twenty years later when she was at her most vulnerable.

"He raped you, didn't he?" she said, quietly.

Sara's hands tightened on the steering wheel but her voice was impassive when she said, "Yes...How did you know?"

"He told me last night, I wanted to know if he was lying..."

She stopped the car and they got out, neither of them speaking again until they reached the relative safety of the hotel room. Having seen enough of them in the past few days to last her a lifetime, Sara reluctantly collapsed on the couch, if it was a choice between this and all the complications of Grissom and Catherine that accompanied her apartment, she would choose this. Grissom of course, knew about her mother, knew what she had done and how she felt about her. Catherine had no idea...Yet, she was sure this would all change; she could not hope to keep this secret much longer. She should have told them years ago, should have known that it would come to this...It was too late now.

"What did you do?" Sara asked again, quietly, as her mother settled herself on the chair opposite and handed her a glass of water.

"What I had to." She said, bluntly,

"What do you-"Sara blanched, most of the water in the glass slopped over the edges and onto her lap as she jumped,

"Murder? A little extreme don't you think...The details don't matter...It only matters what they can prove, and they have no more evidence to suggest that I killed him than they did to suggest that he had set you up..."

"Devil's in the details, and if it's there, they'll find it..." she whispered, feeling sick.

"He would have killed you Sara, he was just biding his time but he wanted revenge. This was only the first step, people like that, there's no off switch, he would have continued torturing you until one of you was dead. I just tipped the scales in your favour, whatever happened after I left...Nothing to do with me." She said quietly,

"Is that all it comes down to?" she breathed, "The choice between taking a man's life, and letting him live?"

"I didn't make that choice."

"You did." She said, quietly,

"That was a long time ago Sara...A lot's changed since then."

"You can change all you want; you can't change your past."

"You seem to have had a good go...Thirteen years in Vegas and none of them know."

"They'll know soon enough..."

"Why didn't you tell them?"

"Yes, because you brought me up to be so open and honest about my feelings and what went on behind closed doors." She snapped, "I was raised on secrets, lies and fresh air..." she broke off, angrily, realising this was getting them nowhere.

"They really don't know? About any of it?"

"You must know they don't...Why else would you be Laura Cox again?"

"I thought people might question Sidle..." she said, with a small smile, "You don't want anyone to know who you are you take the name of your dead, abusive ex-husband...I only wanted you to be happy Sara."

"I know...I...I need to know."

"No you don't."

"I'm not a child anymore; you can't expect me just to live with this..."

"I don't expect you to, but I will ask you, what's done is done, whether I killed him or not, it doesn't matter, he's dead Sara...He doesn't care."

"I care..."

"I know, that was always your problem, you cared too much...If you care about me, if you trust me, you'll never ask me that question again, but if you really want the truth, I'll give it to you, if you're sure that's what you want..."

...

"Nick, Greg, I thought you said you didn't know Laura Cox." Russell said, angrily, catching sight of them as he barrelled round the corner.

"Because we didn't." Greg said, confused,

"Who is she?" Nick asked, curiously,

"You really don't know?" Russell said, quietly,

"What? Russell who is she?"

"Sara's mother..."

"What?" Nick and Greg said, together.

"Come on, layout room."

"Hang on, you can't just say something like that and then walk away and decide that you'll call the team and spread this all over the lab, I was in the interview room with Brass I heard what she said about her daughter, that was Sara?" Nick demanded, feeling sick.

He had known Sara for thirteen years, and the extent of his knowledge about her past was that she had been born and raised in San Francisco and that her mother still lived there. He knew vaguely that she had spent some time in foster care but he had had no idea. Everything now made sense, _why _she had been in foster care, why she had never mentioned her father, why she reacted so strongly to domestic abuse cases and yet, he could not bring himself to believe it.

Could not believe that the terrified, nameless child Laura Cox had mentioned on her interview, the one who had suffered so much and learnt too much about the nature of life too young was his Sara...

"She never told you, about her mother, her past."

"Have you ever met Sara?" Nick said, bitterly, "Openness is not one of her strong suits..."

"OK, Nick, I know how you feel about this, and about Sara will feel, but I don't have a choice, she can't expect this to stay quiet."

"Why? Why does it have to become common knowledge?" Greg said, despite the hurt he felt at Sara never having been able to confide in him or Nick, he still cared about her and what she would want, and this poisoning the infamous lab grapevine was not that. He respected her enough to protect the secrets she had worked so hard to conceal.

"Because it changes this entire investigation and it gives her a Hell of a motive for killing Basderic." Russell said, sharply, "Whatever is going on here, we have to be CSI's first and friends second, and at the moment, she is our most viable suspect."

"This doesn't change any of the physical evidence we have connecting her to this." Nick pointed out, "As she's already said, and as any lawyer will pick up, we have absolutely nothing to tie her to the actual murder, she's right, what we have is less than circumstantial."

"He's right, this changes everything, and yet, nothing." Greg said, "No evidence she was on the gun, no evidence that she spiked the wine bottle either, the only prints found on that belonged to Basderic, if she did do this she was clever and careful, we'll never know."

"I understand that, I'll try and keep it between us, but until we've completely cleared Laura, they need to know..."

...

Reluctantly, Greg and Nick joined Russell in the layout room and soon enough Morgan and Finn met them there, both of them beautifully oblivious to what had unfolded in the interview rooms.

"What do you have?" Russell asked, before either of them could ask the same question.

"I went back to the scene, went back over everything." Finn began, "I printed and ALS'd ever square inch of that apartment, nothing. The only thing I did find was an unusual white powder in the shower cubicle; I sent it to Hodges, other than that I got nothing but the need for a change of clothes. If Laura Cox killed him, she did a bloody good job of cleaning up..."

"Well, we learn by doing." Morgan said, grimly, spreading old crime scene photographs across the table, "I've been doing some more digging into the murder of her husband in 1982." She said,

Nick, Greg and Russell stared down at the crime scene photos. They seemed so much more real and so much more horrific since they knew who shared the blood that was spattered half-way up the walls and that soaked the thin, white bed sheets.

Morgan continued, oblivious to their discomfort, "If I only knew about the physical evidence in this case, I would be at a complete loss as to why she was out of prison..." she began, "She was found at the foot of the bed, bloody knife in one hand, daughter in the other...Since she was put into foster care and witness protection and whatever else they could think of to protect her identity, I haven't been able to find out much about the daughter. I know that the mother tried to get custody over her a few years later but the case didn't even get off the ground before it was shut down."

"How did she stay out of prison?" Finn breathed, studying the graphic pictures,

"I was asking myself the same thing, and then I started looking at the human element... I have no difficulty in believing a jury found her not guilty of murder." Morgan said, grimly, "Her defence was two-fold, on the grounds of insanity, she was schizophrenic, and on the grounds of self defence."

"Self-defence?" Finn said, incredulously, "He was killed in his sleep; how the Hell did they appeal self defence?"

"I thought the same thing, the insanity plea was more heavily used in court, why she ended up in an institution not a prison, but _this_ is why she could plead self-defence." She said, removing some of the more harrowing images from a thick file and throwing them contemptuously on the table before them.

Some of them were of Laura, typical fractures and bruises typical for abuse, except they were what Sara called 'careful' assaults, nothing to the face and little to the wrists, neck or other visible areas. Had she not been hospitalised her injuries would have gone largely unnoticed by society, as she herself had. However some of the images clearly belonged to a child. Her child.

"I've read the hospital reports, what he did to his daughter...I would have killed the bastard myself." Morgan snarled, "Broken arm, fractured ribs, the usual for abuse...The poor woman was clearly terrified, she could never bring herself to make charges against her. From 1976 to 1982 her daughter was hospitalised over-"

"That's enough Morgan." Nick choked, bracing himself against the table as he felt nausea clawing at his stomach.

"What? What's wrong?" Morgan asked, looking confused. The images and the story were horrific, but sadly it was one that they all knew far too well.

"Her daughter's not as nameless as you might think..." Greg said, when it became clear that Nick could not bring himself to tell them.

"What are you talking about Greg?" Finn demanded, "What do you know that we don't?"

"Laura Cox is Laura Sidle...She's Sara's mother..." Greg whispered, quietly flipping the abuse pictures over as he did so.

Morgan clapped her hands over her mouth, tears sparkling in her eyes as she too grasped the full implications of this. Finn, looking physically sick managed to breathe, "What?"

"So the little girl, her daughter is..." Morgan whispered,

"Jesus..." Finn whispered,

"Jesus had very little to do with it." A voice said, softly from the door,

"Sara..." Nick murmured, his stomach plummeting as he wondered how long she had been standing there for.

"Do you want to talk?" she said, quietly, very deliberately directing this at Greg and Nick and Greg and Nick alone.

A/N: Hopefully this was OK, I had a lot of problems trying to decide how to write the interaction between Sara and her mother, damn is she hard to write, so give me your thoughts on that and how you think I'm portraying her character.

A/N2: I know that they would probably have found out about Sara's mother's identity without Sara so shoot me for trying to make it more dramatic!


	16. Locker Room Mystery

**Chapter 16**

Locker Room Mystery

Sara, Nick and Greg had retreated to the welcoming peace of the locker room, Finn, Morgan and Russell had been fairly understanding given the circumstances and had not pushed Sara into confiding in them as well, allowing her to leave with Nick and Greg unquestioned. As it was she was doing this out of necessity more than desire.

She had known exactly what she wanted to say to them but now she found herself _willingly_ doing what she had fought against for thirteen years, her instincts had rendered her speechless.

Nick, seeing this in her body language said, gently, "Sara, we don't have to do this."

While he was burning to know more about her past, maybe less than before now he knew a little about the horror it contained, he was still curious about the enigmatic woman who had been in his life for thirteen years and yet he knew so little about. However, he would not do anything that made her uncomfortable, he respected her and valued their relationship more than that. Greg nodded, agreeing with Nick without needing him to explain the motives he knew they both shared.

"Yes we do...We had to do this a long time ago..." she whispered quietly.

"Sara, you don't owe us anything." Greg told her softly,

"I owe you more than this."

She took a deep breath and looked from one to the other of them before asking the lockers opposite, "How much do you know already?"

"Sara I-"Nick began

"Don't Nick, please, I've made up my mind, listen or leave, just, just don't try and change that." She said, haltingly,

It was Greg that answered in a flat quiet voice, "We know that Laura is your mother, that she killed your father, and that he abused you both."

"My childhood in a nutshell..." she murmured, drawing her knees protectively up to her chest and clasping her hands around them.

"Did anyone know?" Nick asked quietly as she trailed off.

"Gil..." she murmured,

"Of course..." Nick said, there was no malice in it, but she instantly leapt to the defensive,

"I'm sorry, I should have said something I just..." she took a deep breath, looking to the ceiling for inspiration before saying, "I was raised on secrets and lies, giving people detailed accounts of what happened behind closed doors wasn't exactly encouraged...A part of me wanted to tell you, wanted to trust you but...I just...Couldn't..."

"What happened after, after your mother..." Greg began, trailing off awkwardly,

"Killed my father?" she supplied, quietly, "I went in to foster care...I had a decent family, they already had a son, two years older than me, but they all wanted another child, I still keep in touch..."

"What about your mother?" Greg asked

"Plea of insanity bought her out of prison and into a mental institution...I still can't decide which was worse...It kept us out of touch for a while. I had to go searching for her, the system wouldn't allow it to work the other way around. I found her again, a few months after my nineteenth birthday."

"I don't know if I would have been able to go looking..." Nick murmured darkly.

"It was weird...I felt like that, I did, I was angry with her, for what she had done, for landing me in foster care, for not doing something more appropriate sooner, for stupid things...But she was my mother, and we had been through Hell together, and we had both survived, whatever happened afterwards, I couldn't ignore that. I had pitched between so many different emotions in the intervening years that by the time I saw her again, I didn't know how I felt about her...He was a cold, cruel bastard and I hate him for what he did to me, and for what he did to her, but at the time it wasn't that clear cut. I thought..."

She paused and took a deep breath, hands shaking, continuing to address the lockers unable to look at either of her colleagues, knowing what she would find in their expressions and knowing that she would hate it, as she went on in a voice barely audible despite the deadening silence that surrounded them,

"I thought that everybody lived that way, I didn't think that he was doing anything wrong. I should have known...Every time ait the hospital, he would be there, crying, holding my hand and telling me that I was his brave little girl. And I was, I was always _his..._Every single time, saying that he was sorry, beginning for forgiveness, swearing that it would never happen again, promising that he would change, give up the drink, that that was the last time he would ever touch me...I believed him, never questioned him, I swallowed his lies every single time, and every time I regretted it...It's a wonderful thing, the undying hope and optimism within a child, but it has to end eventually...I trusted him, until I couldn't trust anyone..."

Her body was shaking with suppressed emotion as she fought to remain in control of herself. The flood of memories threatening to envelope her and consume her. Neither Nick nor Greg spoke, both of them realising the sensitivity of their situation, neither of them wanting to stop her now and make this harder for her.

"And then, even after all of that, even after the bedside apologies became floorboard threats, and the dreams of change became the nightmares of routine, after _everything _that he had ever done to me, when she killed him...I cried myself to sleep for months..."

"Why?" Nick choked, too startled by this to hold his silence,

"Because _everything _changed." There was an edge of bitterness and anger in her voice now, "Everything was different, the thing that I had come to accept as life was pulled out from under me without warning revealing the ugly truth I had been trapped in. I was thrown into the real world with nothing to hold on to and it was only then I realised how broken I was..."

Silent tears were now streaming down her face and Nick's voice broke as he said, "Sara-"

"Don't." She murmured, anger returning to her voice, putting a stop to the flow of tears, "Don't you dare pity me Nick Stokes..." her voice trembled with grief and anger, "You have _no _idea, _none..._I've done more than enough of that myself and I'm done Nick, I'm done being the victim. That's how I spent my entire childhood and a good part of my adult life, being the victim, the girl whose father was stabbed to death, and the woman who couldn't trust anyone or anything. I had lost all faith in humanity I didn't need anyone, I didn't _want _anyone. I had spent too long trapped within his world that once he was gone and I could see just how screwed up my childhood had been that I realised I only became a victim once I had no reason to be. I had taken everything, the fights, the yelling the hospital trips the beating the rape-"she faltered there as her voice caught on the word, briefly halting her furious accusations, but she forced down the bile that filled her throat and continued hollowly, "I dealt with it, with all of it. I learned to live with it because it was the only life I knew...Don't pity me now Nick, when no-one was there to pity me then, just don't because I, I just-"

She stopped, unable to continue as she broke down completely, her body wracked by the tears and memories now spiralling out of her control and consuming her being.

Nick wanted nothing more than to go to her, to wrap her up and protect her, hold her in his arms and offer her what little comfort he could with words and touch. He knew he could not, knew that in her current state that was one of the worst things he could do and his pity and sympathy for her transformed to anger and made him hate the bastard that had done this to her, wondering how she could force herself to keep going when this had happened on top of everything else she had had to deal with in her life.

"What about now?" Greg asked gently, trying to give her something to ground her.

"Now I do the same thing I've always done, I deal with it...Every day. It never stops, never changes, it never gets any better because there is nothing we can do...A nurse once asked me, when I was in hospital for God only knows what time, if I was OK. I said I was fine...Then she asked me if I loved my daddy, I said I did...I said I loved that monster because I did, because I didn't know what life could be like and she had forgotten and she was too scared to try and remember...I know that if she hadn't, if she hadn't done what she did, we would not be having this conversation. Neither of us would be here, he would have killed us both..."

She was still shaking, her hands chasing one another in endless circles in her lap while the tears she refused to spill glistened in her eyes,

"I forgave her for what she did and for what she didn't do because I empathised with her. Empathy breeds compassion and understanding, the first step to forgiveness. I forgave her and she forgave herself, mostly. We get one...We get on as well as can be expected, considering; see each other at holidays, call each other occasionally...Truth is neither of us knows how to behave around the other, he broke us both but something snapped inside her, seeing her, just reminds me of him, and the potential we all have to...I'm sure she feels the same."

They were quiet, after all this time it was strange for her finally telling them, opening up and telling them everything, nothing was left out nothing was edited to make any of them feel better. The truth. She had known them for so long and she trusted them with her life every day but her secrets? Something altogether more precious and she was not entirely sure how she now felt about this. Everything she had ever said and ever done would be looked upon differently; everything that she now did would be evaluated based on this new information. They would be legitimately concerned about cases and situations that before they were merely curious about and she could not the stand the thought of either of them wrapping her in cotton wool and trying to protect her from the world she had spent her entire childhood trapped in.

They in turn were unsure about how they felt about this. Pity was at the top of both of their lists and they both knew exactly how she would react to that. On the one hand, this was something that she had lived her entire life hiding and it would be stupid of them to presume that, even after this outpouring of emotion, once the floodgates were closed she would simply go back to doing what she had always done, dealing with it. However, neither of them could pretend that they had not heard what she had told them and that they could remain completely impassive towards it. They loved her, and cared about her like a sister and though they had always known, somewhere, or at least strongly suspected that something like this had happened to her. The undying certainty and undeniable surety that now filled them could not be ignored. None of them wanted things to change, but they inevitably must, and that, they now understood, had what she had been trying to escape since her arrival in Vegas. It was not that she did not trust them to know her secrets; she had not been able to trust what they would do with them.

"You watched her interview..." Nick began, being struck by a sudden thought and needing to distract himself from what she had just told him.

He had never intended it as such but she now felt incurably guilty. She had told _Russell _before Nick and Greg, they had become close over the time he had spent with them and Vegas but she had known them for thirteen years. He had just been there, delicately questioning. He could not have had any idea what was going on in her head, what her mind had been attempting to process and it had just slipped out. Her mouth had told him before her brain had caught up and realised what she was doing.

"Yes..." she whispered.

"Do you think she could have-"Nick began

"Killed Basderic?" she breathed, "It took her seventeen years of solid abuse before she killed my father...In a word? No..."

"So, we're back to suicide..." Greg muttered, thinking out loud

"I don't think so..." she said quietly,

"What do you mean?" He asked, watching her closely,

"I've been all over the place the last few days but...If you actually stop and think about it, none of it fits."

"The suicide or-"

"No, not just the suicide all of it. That's just the last straw in a long line of misshapen things...He wouldn't have taken his own life, he would have been enjoying the chaos he had created so much, that's why he does it, for the end result, for the aftermath, not the actual event. He had no reason to kill himself not now..."

"We thought the same thing, but what other explanation is there? I think we've all agreed our main suspect is innocent and there was no evidence of anyone else in that apartment."

"The one that fits in with all of the other things that don't fit." She said quietly, "Think about it, nothing in this case matches with him."

Nick opened his mouth to contradict her but she stopped him saying, "Don't mistake me, the MO fits the crime, but the crime doesn't fit _him..._Think about it, when it was Edie everything was done his way. Just him and her and the exploitation of the terror he created. It was careful and controlled, he never went too far, always only just far enough, but it was unstructured and impulsive. There was never any planning or long-term thought behind it; it was the long term _effects _he was after but in getting those effects he never planned more than a day or two in advance, no elaborate schemes or dramatic plotting. The only thing he had to know was where the line was..."

She paused, watching them closely, Nick thought he could see where this was going, but kept quite allowing her to continue with her explanation.

"_Nothing_ in this case adheres to those principles. It may still be the psychological torture he favoured but it's not him. Everything about this is planning, structure, exploiting subtle character flaws, putting careful pressure on certain cracks until the whole thing falls apart. And there are too many people involved. Before, it was just him and Edie, very up close and personal, no-one else was allowed to be involved. She knew _exactly _who he was and what he was doing and she still couldn't do anything. That was what terrified her the most and that was the draw, that was the thrill for him. This is too complex, too enigmatic; none of it feels right; from the set-up to the suicide..."

"What are you getting at exactly Sara?" Greg asked quietly,

"What if Basderic was never the one pulling the strings? What if he took part to enjoy the end result while the real aim was what was actually going on? What if he was just being used, like Wynard, like me, by someone else who was more concerned about the bigger picture. Who had no problem considering him to be disposable; they had used him to his full extent and they had no further use for him so they killed him...

Nick and Greg considered this, it did seem to fit, but it then begged the question, "Who?"

"I don't know...But whoever it is, I don't think this is over..."

A/N: Damn this was an exhausting chapter to write, and I'm still not sure how happy I am with it. Whenever characters start branching off on deep monologues, especially about something like this, I'm never sure if I get it right, everything has to be perfect or it won't work. Anyway, I hope all of the emotions came across the way I wanted, not a strong point of mine I will admit, and that you felt _something _for these poor characters I'm emotionally draining. Heaven help the poor actors if I had been writing these scenes on the show, of which there are _many _good reasons I'm not! Anyway, hopefully this worked out OK, please let me know what you thought about this chapter, your thoughts on this one are particularly important to me!


	17. Retrospect

**Chapter 17**

Retrospect

Nick and Greg had both insisted Sara go home, which she had done, reluctantly, conceding that she was exhausted, in order to prevent her from becoming embroiled in the CSI gathering that was currently taking place in one of the layout rooms.

"OK, so our thinking now is that Basderic was being used by someone, manipulated by them into setting Sara up, possibly killing Wynard afterwards, and framing her for murder on the pretext of revenge for Edie Graham. That appealed to his ways of working, he agreed and in the end whoever was playing him killing him." Russell summarised neatly for his team his fingers dancing over the surface of the documents and images spread over the table in an order none of them really understood.

"So, the question now becomes, who is the someone?" Morgan asked

"I can't tell you that, but what I can tell you that whoever it is, they're a sneaky son-of-a-bitch." Finn said, grimly, "I combed every inch of that crime scene, there wasn't a trace of anyone else in there, barely any of Laura and we know she was there..."

"Speaking of trace, you ever get anything back from Hodges on your bathtub substance?" Russell asked,

"No, I was on my way to see him when you called a family meeting. I doubt it will mean much though, it was too far removed from the scene, no blood drops leading to the bathroom, no blood in the drains, no-one's prints but Basderic's. "

"OK, even so, check it out, you're probably right and it's most likely nothing but you know the score, everything is something until it isn't." Russell told her before turning back to the rest of his team. "So whoever is pulling the strings on this is clever and careful..."

Morgan said, "Not to mention a twisted son-of-a-bitch; who would want to do all of this to Sara? Who hated her enough to put her through all of _this_?"

Nick and Greg looked at each other and Greg said carefully, "I don't know about you, but my first thought was..." he paused a moment and Nick, knowing they agreed said,

"Natalie Davis?"

"Exactly." Greg said, nodding grimly.

"Wait, wait, hold on a minute, who is Natalie Davis?" Russell asked, looking perplexed, something reflected in Morgan and Finn's faces.

Nick placed a tablet on top of the files that were strewn haphazardly across the table and pulled up an electronic version of Natalie's file as he explained,

"The Miniature Killer. She was a serial here in Vegas a few years ago, before your time. She murdered five people and attempted to kill a sixth before she was caught. She left a perfect scale model of each murder at the crime scene, the detail was terrifying. Here for example, her first, Izzy Delancey, blunt force trauma, she waited around and used his own blood to create the miniature's blood pool..."

As he spoke he brought up a side-by-side shot of the actual scene next to the miniature.

"Bloody Hell..." Finn muttered, echoing the others' thoughts.

"Exactly..." Nick said, as he scrolled through the images of each miniature and its corresponding crime scene, watching the mixture of horror and awe reflected on the faces of his colleagues.

"She made things personal too. Her foster father, Ernie Dell, confessed for her and killed himself to protect her when we got too close, she blamed Grissom." Greg said, picking up where Nick had left off, "After Ernie's death, she sent the fifth miniature addressed to him directly at the lab, in advance...Things got complicated and short story is that an undercover cop ended up getting killed. The sixth miniature..."

He paused and moved over to the next shot, showing Sara's scene.

"She went after Sara?"Morgan breathed, staring at the alarmingly accurate miniature shot of the doll trapped beneath the car.

"Yes, kidnapped her and trapped her under a flipped car out in the desert with a storm on the way, she almost died before we found her, no thanks to Natalie." Nick said, grimly.

"Where is she now?" Russell asked,

"Prison." Nick said, shortly, "She threatened to kill herself but she never went through with it, she's alive and well..."

"You think she could be behind all of this?" Russell asked

"Definitely wouldn't put it past her..." Nick replied, darkly, "We all know it's not impossible to arrange someone's death from behind bars, especially if you're patient, and I think it's fairly obvious that Natalie Davis is more than patient..."

"There's one problem with that though Nick." Morgan pointed out, "Our theory relies on the mastermind having killed Basderic...She couldn't have done that from prison."

"Doesn't rule her out. She could have forced someone else to do it for her. She got to know her victims well, she's incredible when it comes to manipulating people. Hell she managed to get a job here in the crime lab! I think either through threats or rewards, she could have convinced someone to do this for her...And with the parallels already established in this case, it's just a little too much of a coincidence for me, Basderic and Ernie Dell's suicides are so similar it's almost poetic, they just add to everything else, the throwbacks to Wynards murder with the wine glasses, the rohypenol..." Greg pointed out.

"OK, OK, so if it was Natalie, there would be something relating to her signature, a miniature of some sort _something _that ties her to it, serials need recognition, the signature doesn't prove its them, it just alerts the only people they really care about knowing, the ones that are trying to catch them; I want you to go over everything again. All if it, tear every scrap of evidence we have to pieces. If Natalie Davis is behind this, I want evidence to prove it..."

...

Sara slipped quietly into the apartment, placing her keys quietly in the dish on the counter before moving slowly into the living room.

Grissom was sitting on the sofa, Hank draped across his feet the dog's sad, solemn eyes following Sara as she crossed the room and curled on the chair beside her husband.

"Hey." She said, quietly,

"Hey..." he said,

"Where's Catherine?" Sara asked, the older woman conspicuous by her very obvious absence.

"Picking up her things from The Eclipse, I said she could stay here while she was in Vegas, I hope that's OK?"

"Of course..."

"Sara..." his intense blue eyes finding her soft brown ones with ease as he said, "We need to talk...You've been avoiding me; we've been avoiding us, since I got back..."

"I know." She whispered, unable to maintain the eye contact between them, "I'm sorry."

"We can't ignore this because of what's happened Sara, I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but these last few months..."

"No, you're right, these last few months have been Hell...For both of us. This was just the wake-up call we needed but I don't expect everything to just become perfect again because of it."

"...How did we get from 'perfect' to this?" he murmured, softly,

"I don't know...Or maybe, maybe I don't want to...It worked, it did. We were both happy and the distance kept things fresh, it made it interesting, made us closer, we lived for when we saw each other...We haven't lived in a while."

"No...I don't think either of us have been living for a while...We've spent too much time trying to force ourselves to deal with it and be OK alone, that we forgot what was important...I'm sorry it's taken this to make us see sense."

"I'm not." She said, quietly, "Nothing was right, nothing was working, and tentative phone calls weren't going to change anything." She said flatly, "We had to start being honest with each other, brutally honest, _this, _this isn't a marriage, or a relationship, this is two people trapped on different sides of the world with matching wedding rings-" Her voice caught, and tears glimmered briefly in her eyes, but she refused to shed them, and refused to show him. This was not a time for vulnerability and soft, comforting words.

"You're right...Something had to happen, _has _to happen for us to move forward..."

"I want to make this work...Or maybe that's not the right way to say it, I want it _to_ work, I do, but...Not in the way it used to...I love you, nothing will ever change that, but I can't live like this anymore Gil. The time differences, the phone tag, I'm having more of a relationship with your voicemail; the only time I've heard your voice these past few months has been when it's recorded by a machine...I don't want to come back to an empty apartment, with nothing but a dog and a take-away menu for company. I don't want to wake up at three am with nothing but a pillow for comfort. I don't want to try and get through _this _on my own, but I will...I will Because the alternative is making you unhappy, and I don't want that...If the only way that we can both be happy is to be apart, then I would rather that than forcing something and rebuilding the pretence of a marriage on lies and bitterness...Something, something has to give, or this relationship will..."

Tears were cascading, silently down her cheeks. Frankly, she was amazed that she still had the energy to cry after the amount she had been doing in the last few days...

"Hey, hey..." he said gently, wiping her eyes, "I love you...Do you hear me? I love you Sara Sidle, and I'm not going to lose you to a few thousand miles and a couple of oceans; not after what we've been through. All those years of dancing around one another, insecurities on both sides, friends leaving in one way or the other, hundreds of miles of desert, psychotic serial killers, and worst of all, Conrad Ecklie...If all it takes to make you smile again, to make us both smile, is coming back to Vegas then it's done...I left it for you, for us, to find you, to be with you, this is wrong, we shouldn't have ended up on different continents after leaving everything for the other...I know you love Vegas, and Vegas loves you, you can't leave them now, I understand that, but I can."

"Are you sure that's what you want?" she breathed, knowing what would happen if it was not.

"I want this. I want you." He said, softly, "You're the here and now, you would have thought that all these years on this job, I would have learned that. Books and research, there's no end date, they will always be waiting for me, this marriage won't. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a microscope, missing everything that's going on around me for the sake of the history books, contributing something to the world, being remembered when I'm gone, it's all bittersweet if it's done by nameless strangers, but not by the people I love. Being remembered when you're dead is wonderful, but not at the expense of not living before you're dead, and you're right, we're not living, we haven't been living in months..."

"Are you sure Peru can do without its leading entomologist?" she said with a watery smile, and a flicker of her old humour,

"It'll have to...I quit three hours ago."

She laughed throatily at this, the effect slightly soured by the salty tears but before she knew what was happening, she found her lips pressed tenderly against his.

She panicked, pulling away from him before she was aware of what she was doing, terror flaring in her chest like a dying bird, forcing her to break the connection between them as a flood of memories and emotions that did not belong to her, flooded her being, taking control of her body without her permission.

"I'm sorry." She gasped, standing and looking chalk white, startling the dog at their feet, "I'm so sorry..."

She ran from the apartment, grabbing her keys from the dish as an afterthought as she went.

"Sara!" he called, helplessly, half rising as the door slammed, knowing better than to try and follow her. She would never let anyone near her now, she thought she had to deal with this by herself, and though it damn near killed him to sink back into the chair, allowing Hank's large, sad head, to sit in his lap, he knew that the damage he would do by attempting to follow her would be irreparable.

...

A/N: Hopefully this was alright, fingers crossed the twist of having someone else behind Basderic made sense. The whole relationship-y writing style has never been a strong point of mine so let me know if the conversation between Sara and Grissom was OK and if not give me tips for the rewrite :D


	18. Nostalgia

**Chapter 18**

The Art of Escapism

Nick and Morgan had headed off to the evidence locker together to dissect every piece that had been collected at Basderic's apartment, leaving Finn and Greg the enjoyable task of visiting Hodges.

"Hodges. Do you have the results of my trace?" Fin asked, hoping to imply by her tone and the bags under her eyes that she wanted a one word answer and not his usual encyclopaedia of prattle.

Subtlety however, had never been Hodges' strong suit, "Indeed I do have the results of your 'tubstance' if you will, which means that the two of you get to play 'name that compound'." He said with a wolfish grin.

"Ecstasy." Greg said, flatly, while Finn wore an expression that told them they had narrowly missed out on being the first people to observe spontaneous human combustion.

"What? No, it looks nothing like ecstasy." Hodges said, disappointed,

"Yes it does. It looks to me to the number one choice of compound that you're on." Greg said, as Finn smirked beside him, nodding in agreement.

"I do not take drugs." Hodges informed them, loftily, "Except of course for medicinal purposes..." he clarified after a moment's thought.

"What does it say about you that Russell can get away with that but you can't?" Finn asked, innocently.

"Get on with it Hodges." Greg said, grinning.

"Let's." He said, far too obligingly, "It's an alkaline compound..."

"Hodges, this is important, I am not playing twenty questions with you."

"No you're not, you're playing name that compound, much better." He replied infuriatingly.

"Hodges, this could be vital to a case that could decide whether or not someone you have worked with for about a decade is imprisoned for murder." Finn snarled, "Just give it to me."

"Tut tut Miss Finlay, I care about Sara too, which is why I have to do this, call it a coping mechanism...By the by, this particular compound is also soluble in water..."

"Damn..." Finn hissed,

"Ammonia?" Greg suggested, before Finn attempted to throttle the insufferable trace tech.

"Ah, no." Hodges said, maddeningly, "Next clue, it is deliquescent, it readily absorbs water as well as-"

"Hodges I know what deliquescent means!"

"And is used in the manufacture of pulp, paper, textiles, and soap and as a drain cleaner."

"Sodium hydroxide." Greg said

"Correct. Also known as lye or caustic soda." He said, producing a print out of the results and wafting it irritatingly under their noses.

"I went through all that for bloody sodium hydroxide?" Finn snarled incredulously,

"Oh no, not just sodium hydroxide-"he began gleefully,

"I pity your testicles if you say 'name that compound' _one _more time because I swear to God-"

"Your sample also contained microscopic trace of unreacted sodium." He said, fearing for the safety of his testicles, "Meaning that it was sodium first that then reacted with the water to form sodium hydroxide."

"Isn't that reaction incredibly exothermic?" Greg asked, curiosity winning out over irritation,

"Yes, but the amount that was presented wouldn't have really made much of a dramatic trap, barely enough to even be noticeable..."

"Thank you Hodges..." Greg said, taking the results from the impossible tech and dragging Finn away before she did him serious damage.

"What does that give us?" he asked, as they set off for an aimless wander around the lab, wondering why there would have been sodium in Basderic's bathroom.

"A migraine." Finn replied, unhelpfully, massaging her temples.

Greg smirked, "Oh I'm sure Hodges can name a compound to help you with that."

"I'm sure he can." Finn growled through gritted teeth with a 'don't push it' look planted firmly across her face.

"What are you thinking?" Greg asked, as they entered the break room,

"I hope Morgan and Nick have more than we do..."

...

"How are you doing?" Morgan asked, as Nick threw yet another piece of evidence back into the box.

"Nothing." He sighed, "You?"

"Nothing yet." She replied with a small smile.

Morgan had taken the gun and re-printed it, checking for potential DNA, and, after coming up empty, was now in the process of removing the bullets and examining them, starting by printing them.

Nick had checked the wine bottle and glasses, along with mapping out the entire crime scene and filling in the little evidence Finn had managed to extract from it, in an attempt to find something, a pattern of some sort that would tell them one way or another, what had happened.

He was now poring over Robbins' autopsy report.

The graveyard shift had not been offering up much of a challenge in the cause of death these days and shockingly, Robbins had ruled that the lump of lead impacting it at high speed had done irreversible damage to Basderic's brain and had ultimately resulted in massive haemorrhaging and death.

What had been the source of difficulty for the experienced coroner had been in trying to answer that age old question 'to kill thyself? Or not?" In the end, Robbins had been forced to conclude that, from the autopsy alone, it was impossible to tell whether they were dealing with a homicide or a suicide.

According to Robbins, the amount of alcohol in his system, combined with the thoughtful ruffie that had been slipped into his drink, meant that Basderic would have been amenable to being paraded down The Strip naked and sold as a prostitute, concluding that it would not have been difficult for the killer to have encouraged a gun into his mouth but also, given the condition of his liver and medical history, both of which implied that he was a long term alcoholic, it would not have been impossible for him to have killed himself either.

As Nick became increasingly annoyed by the word 'inconclusive' littered throughout the reports, Morgan interrupted him, "That's weird..."

"What?" he asked, looking up.

She was about half-way through the neat little row of bullets she had lined up on the table, examining each one carefully and printing them, and was holding one out to him for closer inspection.

She tipped it gently onto his palm and he realised what she meant instantly saying, "Yeah, that is weird..."

The bullet looked exactly the same as the others in the magazine but was several times lighter than its fellows.

"Let's see why..." he said, carefully dissecting the bullet and its components, and was surprised to discover that, upon separating the cartridge from the projectile, that it was hollow.

"What?" Morgan asked, registering the shock on his face.

In answer, he turned the cartridge upside down, "No propellant." He said, "Someone's removed it."

"Well what have they replaced it with?" she asked, moving around the table to join him.

Delicately, using a small pair of tweezers, Nick extracted the thin role of paper contained within the shell casing and spread it out on the table in front of them. Morgan placed a magnifying glass over it, allowing them to read it.

"Does it mean anything to you?" she asked, squinting at it, in a tone that implied it meant nothing to her.

"No..." Nick said, in disappointment.

"You should send a picture to Sara, see if she recognises it." Morgan suggested.

"I don't know..." Nick said, reluctantly, not wanting to give her any more reason than she already had to become involved in this case, knowing that she had been through enough recently and was at near breaking point as it was.

"This could be important Nick, and neither of us can figure out what it means." She said sternly, "It didn't open up the cartridge, kick out the gunpowder and snuggle in there by itself did it? Someone went to the trouble of hiding it in there, making it unlikely that anyone else would find it. It means something."

...

Sara staggered back to the car, crying out involuntarily in pain as she did so, opening the passenger's door and sitting in it sideways, allowing her feet to dangle above the hot ground below.

She had taken the car and driven to a dense area of forest, near the mountains on the outskirts of Vegas that she knew well. It was her little oasis in Sin City, somewhere that she could go and experiment freely with escapism.

She could sit and enjoy the view of the mountains behind her and the huge expanse of great, all consuming desert in front of her and lose herself in the beautiful scenery, empty her mind of the mind-numbing, addictive qualities of the city. Or she could run. Run endlessly between the trees on the soft, even ground. Run away from her problems and her miserable life in Vegas, escape everything if only for a few hours.

She had a lot to run from...

She had pushed herself beyond the point she had needed to stop, and then some. Terrified by the sinister shadows that lurked around every corner and the snatching fingers of the trees' branches, clawing at her as she fled from them. And then there was him. Behind every tree, crouched in the shadows, he was there, waiting for her, panicking her more and more, wherever she went within the beautiful forest, there was no escape, and he was everywhere.

She had driven herself near insane, running from things that only she could see or understand and she was feeling the effects of it now.

Removing her shows she gingerly examined her now ruined socks, the scarlet blood that had seeped through the thick white cotton evidencing what her senses had been screaming at her for some time. She peeled off the thing fabric, wincing and hissing in pain as the action infuriated her already howling injuries and examined the mess of torn ragged skin that was the remains of her mangled foot.

Cursing herself for her own reckless stupidity, she switched her phone back on and placed it on the dashboard to wake up while she bathed her shrieking feet with cold water.

She was surprised to find that she had over a dozen missed calls from Nick in the last half an hour and, knowing that her silence would have terrified him, made to return his call when he tried her again,

"Nick?" she said, balancing the phone against her ear and hissing as the water cleansed her injuries, though not without punishing her for her thoughtlessness.

"Jesus Sara, thank God, are you OK?" he said sharply, torn between being relived and livid.

"I'm fine, I just, I went for a run, I had my phone switched off, what's up?" she said, concealing the flash of irritation both for compulsively explaining herself to him and for him making her feel the need to by treating her like a disobedient puppy because she had not come running when he called.

"Nothing, not really, you just had me worried sick Sara..." he took a deep breath, calming himself, "I'm sorry I overreacted, just, promise you won't do that to me again..."

"I'm sorry too..." she murmured, and she was.

Her anger had abated and she now felt guilty for frightening him like this, he did not deserve it and the people he would surely have called in his panic did not deserve it either. After everything that had happened to her, she had to admit that she was more fragile than usual and they had every right to overreact like this if she vanished off the face of the Earth. Something that her conscience told her, irritatingly, was just as well given the state she had ended up in when left her own coping devices.

"Listen, I don't want to bother you with this now but something weird's come up in the case, could you take a look at it, tell me if it means anything to you? We think the killer's trying to send us a message, but it doesn't make sense to any of us, it's pretty specific. I sent a picture to your phone, could you take a look and call me back?" he asked,

"Sure." She said, obliging him and hanging up before sifting through her messages to find it.

Once she had located it and was waiting for it to download, she found a clean pair of socks in her gym bag and pulled them on over her feet, seeing to her disgust that, now free of most of the blood and gore, looked as though she had been running over cheese graters.

Opening the image Nick had sent her she stared at it in a mixture of horror and shock as her brain attempted to process this, finally breathing,

"You're back..."

A/N: Hopefully this was OK, I've tried to balance it out a little as I've had a couple of pretty heavy chapters so the Finn/Hodges scene, apart from giving me something a little more fun to write, was really designed for some light relief, some case development and then a little look at Sara so fingers crossed this chapter worked out OK, let me know what you think as the plot (hopefully) thickens.


	19. North and South

**Chapter 19**

North and South

"Nick?" Sara said, after managing to dial the number while pulling on her shoes and sticking her key into the ignition,

"Hey Sara, what's up did you-"

"I'm coming back to the lab now." she said shortly, before hanging up, not giving him the opportunity to question her, or tell her not to.

As she pulled out of the small forest clearing she had parked in, feeling her stinging feet complaining as to the use she was now putting them to as she worked the pedals to take the car back out onto the tarmac road before setting back off to Vegas.

Thoughts were leaping into her mind before leaving to make may for another half-formed idea, none of them pausing long enough to give her time to consider them, but all of them disturbing enough to cause her considerable concern.

Why now? Why after all this time? She surely couldn't still be bitter towards her over his death? She could. But why hadn't she done anything about it before now then? Why now? What was significant about now? Maybe nothing? Maybe she had just been biding her time? Maybe this was the first chance she had for revenge? It was common knowledge that she was patient...Dangerously so...

Her thoughts carried her all the way back into the city, as she pulled up outside the lab she remembered with a jolt _Gil._

She had been so used to jumping from place to place in Vegas without a care, no-one waiting, terrified at home, concerned about her well-being. No-one to call and tell that she was going to be late. Except there was. Grissom.

Pulling out her phone she slammed it against her ear and waited, pacing by the car as it rang. As it rang out. Swearing under her breath she left a hasty message as the automated machine told her how to, "Gil it's me, listen I, I', sorry, I was stupid, I, I don't know what happened, look I, I've had to go into the lab, just, just don't worry about me, I'm OK, really I am I just, I'm sorry...Call me back when you get this, please..."

How could she have let it come to this? How could she have forgotten him? She felt angry at herself for not calling him sooner, but the sickening sound of the voicemail message had stirred more than that in her as a malevolent voice whispered in the dark back corners of her mind, _Because he hasn't been here for you in months..._She hated herself for thinking that. Was more sickened by that single thought than by anything else that had happened in these last few days. Of course he was there for her, just because he was not in Vegas did not mean that he had not been there for her. In fact, if anything, she had not been there for him. He had been incredible these last few days and she had ran, pushed him away, rejected him because of one stupid kiss...

_This is her fault..._She told herself as she slammed the door and marched into the lab, weaving her way through the corridors to the break room, ignoring the small flow of people moving in and out of the lab. She knew these corridors well..._Too well..._And threw herself into the break room, startling Greg and almost causing him to spill his precious Blue Hawaiian coffee down his front,

"Jesus Chri- Sara! What are you doing here?"

"Have you seen Nick?" she asked, not in the mood to provide him with a long winded explanation, she was in the mood to _do _something, to throttle someone.

"He was in one of the prep rooms with Morgan, working the case."

She made to leave and he called her back, "Sara?"

"What?" the fire in her eyes would have told any sane and non-suicidal person not to stop her, she was running with a case and God help anyone who got in her way,

"If you calm yourself and manage to avoid spontaneously combusting for two minutes, he's meeting me here, he said he had something to show me."

"Oh he's got something alright...Twisted bitch..."

"Hey, hey, sit down, what's wrong?"

"It's her, Greg, she's back, all of _this_ it's all her, I-" she began, haltingly, before she was interrupted by Nick entering the break-room.

"Hey, Sara, what are you doing here, you didn't have to-"

"Yes I did Nick, how did you think you could show me something like that and expect me not to do anything about it?" she snarled, still too full of adrenaline and pain to bother keeping her temper, "She did this to me Nick, she set me up, she made that bastard-"

"Hey, hey, shh, sit down, you're OK..." Nick said, soothingly, making the mistake of gently taking her arm and trying to guide her back into the seat she had leapt from in her agitation.

She jerked her arm from his grip, everything was firing on all cylinders, making her overly sensitive to his innocent touch.

"I'm sorry..." she muttered, pausing for breath.

Nick was worried about her now, and knew that it had been a mistake to tell her, he had been right, he should have left it for a few days, until she had had a chance to deal with everything else that had been flung upon her recently.

Quite apart from her agitation and inability to sit still, something he recognised with a flinch of nostalgia, from years ago when she found a hot lead on a case, she couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't _breathe _until she had run with it and solved the damn thing; the only one who had been able to convince her to take a step back had been Grissom, everyone else learned not to even attempt to calm her from chasing the adrenaline hit that came with a cracking the puzzle, it was not just her eyes that burned intensely, her skin was also feverish and he was sure that she was currently running on adrenaline and could not fathom how she was still standing...

"Calm down, you're-" he began, soothingly,

"Calm down? I will not calm down Nick, that bitch has done this to me she's-"

"I know, I know Sara, please just stop, you're scaring me." Nick said,

"What's happened?" Greg asked, confused and alarmed by his colleagues' erratic behaviour.

Nick removed a shot of the roll of paper found inside the bullet and handed it to Greg as he began to explain, "We found that in one of the bullets recovered from the gun Basderic was shot with. Sara recognised it..."

"What does it mean?" Greg asked, staring at the words on the paper,

"She said that to me, told me that she had played me, manipulated me, that she had won..." Sara said, she had pitched between restless to flat, disbelief in the minute or so it had taken Nick to fill Greg in.

"The question is, why now?" Greg asked,

"I don't know..." Sara said quietly, as Nick shook his head.

"I want to know how she's managed to pull all of this off, I didn't think she had anyone on the outside that she would trust to do this...I think there's more to it..."

"Nick, what do you mean 'on the outside'?" Sara asked, slowly,

"Well, she's in prison isn't she?" Nick said, confused,

"No. What. Nick, who are you talking about?" Sara asked, confused,

"Natalie Davis." Nick said,

"Natalie? The Miniature Killer?" Sara asked, this had not occurred to her,

"Who are _you _talking about?" Nick asked,

"Hannah West."

Greg and Nick did not have long to process this as Russell asked from the door, "Who is Hannah West?"

It took Nick, Greg and Sara almost twenty minutes to recount to story of Hannah and her brother Marlon to Russell, Finn and Morgan, who were all wondering when they had signed up to the crash course of Vegas' most notorious psychopaths.

"So her brother Marlon killed herself, and she blamed you for that?" Russell clarified, who by now had accepted that a SWAT team could not have removed Sara from the building and had allowed her to stay and discuss the case.

"Yes, she blamed me for everything..." Sara said quietly ,

"And the message in the bullet..." Russell read it aloud, "Can I still make you think things happened when they didn't?"

"I was something that she said to me, after her brothers trial, we gave the jury reasonable doubt because of what she did when there was no doubt about it...Marlon killed her, Hannah covered for him..."

A loud shout of anger from the AV lab broke the silence in the wake of Sara's words and caused them all to jump.

"What's up Archie?" Russell asked, concerned at the usually mild-mannered AV tech's outburst.

"I'm sorry, I tried but I can't..." he said

"Whoa whoa whoa, back it up there Archie, what can't you do?"

"Stop them...Someone's accessing our servers, remotely through my machine..."

"I thought that was impossible." Greg said, surprised,

"It should be." Archie said, miserably, running his hands through his hair,

"Can you see what they have access to? What have they taken?" Finn asked,

"They have access to everything, but they're not taking anything, they're giving..."

"Giving? Giving what?" Russell asked,

"I don't know...A word document and a video link."

"Open them..." Sara said, quietly,

Archie did not argue, and selected the word file as it had finished first. It was an electronic cut and paste job and they all stared at it in horror, reading the altogether too familiar words,

_Can I still make you think things happened when they didn't?_

"Open the video Archie..." Russell said,

"What's going-"

"Just do it Archie!" Sara said, terrified now.

Archie obliged. A pair of small, pale hands were twisting themselves in front of the screen

"Is that?" Nick began,

"Yes." Sara said shortly,

"Do you know what they're saying?" Greg asked quietly,

"See how it feels..." Sara breathed.

No-one dared to ask the question on all of their minds...

The camera panned out to show a dark room, someone flicked a light on and illuminated an unconscious figure bound to a chair in the centre. Sara felt sick as she recognised him instantly, _Gil..._

A small revolver came in to focus and they watched as the same hand that had signed earlier deliberately placed one bullet in it before snapping it into place and spinning it. The gun was cocked and pointed at the head of the victim,

"She wouldn't..." Finn muttered,

Sara knew she would. Something confirmed as the barrel shifted one place to the left with a harmless click. She still let out a small scream that was stifled as her hand went to her mouth,

"Hannah, Hannah please..." she choked, watching as a second bullet was placed into the revolver, opposite the first.

"Fitting don't you think?" The voice on the video asked, "Russian roulette, in Vegas..."

She spun the barrel again and pointed the gun at Grissom's head, finger dancing tantalisingly over the trigger, "Hannah please, I'm begging you." Sara gasped.

"Sara Sidle, begging...Well I'd say I', now one miracle from being a saint..." she pulled the trigger again.

Again the gun clicked and Sara's heart threw itself against her ribcage, desperately trying to get to her husband.

"Oh well, third time's a charm..." she said, expertly fitting another bullet into the gun's barrel.

"Hannah, Hannah, don't do this, please, he has nothing to do with this, it's me, it's me, please Hannah-"

"Yes, it is you...But you chose not to hurt me, you hurt Marlon...Pain by proxy, far more effective than whips or knives don't you think."

She pulled the trigger again, again, nothing. Again nausea tore at Sara's stomach, images that did not yet exist filling her head as she allowed herself to breathe again for a second.

"He's lucky." she commented casually, as though they were pulling slots, "But you're am intelligent woman Sara, I'm sure you can figure out the odds...I would start saying goodbye if I were you..." she said, gleefully placing another bullet in the gun.

"No, Hannah, please, anything, I'll do anything, just-" the silhouette moved forwards again, raising the gun and taking deliberate aim,

"No, Hannah, please, you don't have to do this, you don't..."

"Marlon needs me to..." she said, pulling the trigger again,

Sara's breath caught in her chest as the gun jammed, "Lucky devil..." Hannah muttered,

"Hannah please...Let him go, just let him go, you can do whatever you want to me-"

"Oh I already have...It's nowhere near enough, the only way you can feel anything even close to your pain is if I do this. I have no choice Sara, you understand, I'm sure."

"Pain? What pain? It didn't take you more than a fucking shower to get over his death! You didn't love him! He rejected you, he was nothing to you, you were nothing to him! Nothing! Gil..." Sara screamed, dissolving into hysterics, unaware of anything around her except for the figure on the screen,

"I loved Marlon...And he loved me, more than you'll ever understand...He would want me to do this, I have to..."

"You bitch!" Sara screamed, tears streaming down her cheeks, "What do you want? What do you want?"

"This." came the cold reply.

Bang.

She had pulled the trigger again and this time the gun did not hit a blank, and it did not jam, it hit a live round that struck the figure on the chair in the neck. Blood sprayed the shooter and the camera. He fell to the floor as she did, eyes wide, hand covering her mouth as violent tremors wracked her delicate frame, her wide eyes fixed on the screen as the scarlet blood pool began to form around his head...

A/N: I'm cruel I know, hopefully this chapter was just one big giant intense ball of angst and twists and hopefully this was something a little different and somewhat surprising. Even if it wasn't, let me know what you thought, this chapter was written on pure impulse and instinct so fingers crossed that makes for a positive thing.

A/N2: I recognise that this steals the plot line from my Code Red story (can I steal ideas from myself?) anyway, I ended up with horrible writer's block on that story but it was supposed to work out something like this o rather than leave it I merged it with this one.


	20. War of the Words

**Chapter 20**

War of the Words

The deafening gunshot continued to reverberate around the inside of her skull long after Hannah had disconnected the video feed.

The black, empty static on the screen accurately represented the inside of her head. Nothing. Hollow. Empty. The technical term was 'in shock'. Numb Numb to everything happening around her, her entire being consumed by that one thing. That gunshot.

She felt somone's hands around her shoulders, but it felt as though she was covered in a thick blanket that resisted the attempts of the physical world to contact her in her current state.

Someone was saying something, attempting to lift her to her feet, to check that she was still living. She had fallen to the floor, hand trembling over her mouth as the feeling drained from her to the chilling tiles beneath her dead body.

She found herself standing, without ever remembering giving her body permission to uncoil from the curled, protective ball she had twisted into in favour of swaying on legs that did not seem to be there, the only thing fighting the gravity that was attempting to drag her back to Earth were the strong arms wrapped around her waist, supporting her.

Her pillar guided into the break room next door gently lowered her onto the chair in the corner.

She slumped forward, elbows resting on her knees, her tears now falling perpendicular to them as her sides heaved, trying to force air into her lungs between the great sobs that felt as though they were attempting to cleave her in two.

She became suddenly aware of Nick, he had taken her away from the others, away from that damn monitor, from the Hell that was erupting in the room next to them and was now crouched on the ground in front of her, his forehead nestled against hers, his tears mixing with the ones torn from her eyes. His arms were wrapped around her and he held her, rocking her slowly backwards and forwards as they both attempted to console the other and deal with the grief that was threatening to undo them. He was trying to numb the pain that was the only thing she was aware of.

He could not. It was all she could feel, all she would ever know, there was nothing else anymore, she had lost everything. The only man she had ever loved. The only human being on this planet that she had been able to trust unconditionally. The only thing that had made it possible to get up in the morning. The only thing tying her to this world and reminding her that it was still possible to feel. Now she felt nothing. Nothing but pain. She could not speak. Could not think. Could not _breathe._

A phone.

The soft ringing calling her back to the world of the living was stubbornly forcing itself from beneath her curled fingers that were wrapped tightly around the phone clutched in her hand.

_Grissom. _

She stared at it in disbelief. Before being fully conscious of what she was doing she found herself pressing 'answer'.

"Gil?" she choked throatily.

"Hello Sara." Came the silky reply.

The little colour that had returned to it drained from her face as she hissed,

"You bitch..."

"You've just had a big shock so I'll forgive it this time but you may want to work on your greetings, people don't generally respond too well to that kind of response to a simple hello." Hannah informed her matter-of-factly.

Sara found herself on her feet, every muscle in her body tensed, the hatred and accompanying adrenaline that had filled her at the sound of her voice temporarily allowing her to overcome the shock as instinct kicked in, instinct bred in her from her childhood that taught her to fight first and fall apart later.

"You bitch, you'll pay for this, I swear to God, I will find you, if it kills me I will find you and I will make you pay..."

"I don't think so...Getting away with murder has become something of a speciality of mine; so I daresay you will be reunited with dear 'Gil' before I'm reunited with a judge and a jury..."

"Who said anything about judges and juries? I don't need either of them to tell me what I'm going to do to you for this..."

"Dangerous words Sara...That temper of yours will get you in to trouble one day..."

"It will get you into trouble...Where is he Hannah?" she spat

"Well you tell me...Would he get into Heaven?"

...

Greg stared at the blackened computer screen in horror, unable to understand what he had witnessed. Nick had taken Sara from the room and sat her next door so she could fall apart in privacy, he should have gone with them but he was having trouble stringing thoughts together as the world moved on without him.

"Is it real?" He found himself asking Archie.

The AV tech was still staring in disbelief at the screen, paralysed by shock

"Archie!" Greg barked, sharply, "Is it real? Is it genuine?"

"I, I don't know..." he stammered at last

"What do you _think_?"

"I, It, It could be a fake, she's smart enough to but...No...No, Greg, I, I think it's real..."

Greg turned away from them and staggered from the AV lab, ordering his feet to take him somewhere that wasn't there, his thoughts to confused to be any more specific than that. He felt dizzy and sick as the world pitched beneath his feet like a little boat lost in a storm at sea.

He could not accept what the world was simultaneously thrusting upon all of his senses. Could not accept it because it could not be true. It _wasn't _true. Surely it wasn't true because Gil Grissom could not be dead...

He found himself sliding down the icy wall in the corridor that linked the lab with the reception. The shadowy hallway that provided the only tenuous link with outside, connected their crazy lives with the real world; the gateway between escapism and the art of forgetting, where the dreams and nightmares of Sin City became a reality, and found that he could no longer tell the difference...

...

"Don't Hannah." Sara spat, "I-"

"I would say heaven, if it's any consolation, the only big mistake he ever made was falling in love with you, your very own Romeo and Juliet...The only problem is, when Juliet gets what she wants...Romeo dies...I'd say that's fair wouldn't you, settled scores before his death, he should be-"

"I've told you before Hannah, don't play games with me, we both know he's not dead..." Sara whispered venomously,

"No, one of us knows, knows the truth, the other one prays to a God she condemns for giving false hope and misplaced faith..."

"We'll both be praying when I find you, I know you're lying to me Hannah..."

"I've said it before, I'll say it again, you're a smart woman Sara, now you use that intelligence and you find me one good reason why I wouldn't kill him...I'll spell it out for you, how I see it. You killed Marlon. I killed Grissom. An eye for an eye, that's only fair..."

"No..." Sara said slowly, "Because I didn't kill Marlon; you did. He committed suicide because of what you did to him, not me, because you obsessed over him, because you got too close, and then you killed the girl he loved, I didn't do any of that Hannah, his death was your fault. An eye for an eye, doesn't get you here..."

She paused, Sara could practically hear her twisted mind riddling this one out, when she finally answered, it was in a soft and deadly whisper, "I didn't kill Marlon...But I did kill your husband."

...

Nick had taken Sara's place on the couch, burying his head in his hands. When the phone call had first came through and he had seen Grissom's name he had been too shocked to react immediately when Sara had answered it and found, not her husband, but the person responsible for his death on the other end of the line, Hannah West.

He had let her take the call, let her wander into the maddening abyss that was this lab, alone with nothing and no-one but Hannah whispering her malicious lies in Sara's ear.

God only knew what she was saying and what Sara was going through. God? God had nothing to do with this...What kind of God would do _this?_ Would heap so much misery on top of one person, one good person. She had been through more than most people suffer through their entire lives in the last few dies, on top of the car crash that had been her childhood that had also come back to haunt her and now she had lost her husband.

He had been the only person she had ever really trusted, the only one she could allow to help her through the Hell Hannah West had thrust upon her. And now he was gone...

He jumped as his own phone started ringing, though it was not as cruel as hers had been.

_Caller Unknown._

"Hello-?" The word was barely out of his mouth when the panicked, breathless voice answered,

"Nicky?" it asked, with devastating familiarity,

"Yes...Who is this?"

"Nicky it's me, it's Catherine, what the Hell is going on?" she demanded, she sounded terrified already.

"God Cath I...Where are you?"

"What do you mean where am I? I'm in Vegas, at Sara and Grissom's place with no Sara and no Grissom, what in Hell is happening?"

"Jesus Catherine, I, I can't do this over the phone...Can you come to the lab?"

...

"Stop lying to me Hannah..."

"It's interesting to me to see how far your blind hope will stretch into actually making you delusional...What makes you think I wouldn't do this?"

"Because he doesn't deserve this..." she said, softly,

"You do...Everything I'd done up to that point caused you pain and suffering yes, but it wasn't enough, you were only damaged, not broken, and I didn't just want to break you anyway, I wanted to destroy you..."

"You had me framed for murder and _raped _and you don't think you destroyed me?" she breathed, hollowly,

"No, you're a strong woman Sara, I know that, credit where credit is due...I knew it would take more than that to break you, that was just the honeytrap if you like, horrific? Yes. But not enough, not nearly enough, especially when he started to fix you...When Marlon died, I was left with nothing, and in order to leave someone with nothing you have to take _everything _away from them. Your everything was Gil Grissom, so I took him away..."

"Yes, you did take him away...But you didn't kill him."

"God would you listen to yourself? Your denial is pathetic and I expected better. He's gone. He's dead Sara, I killed him. He. Is. Dead..."

"'Can I still make you think something happened, that never did?' Isn't that what you asked me Hannah? Wasn't that the message you worked so hard for me to receive, it would be wrong of me to ignore it now. The answer is no, you can't..."

Cold laughter filled her ears, "Isn't that just the cherry on the cake? I knew only you would appreciate the brilliance of this fully, it's nice to finally have an equal to play in this giant game of chess we all call life, but ours is quickly drawing to a close. I didn't play with you, I played you. I played you Sara, and I won. I won, just like I did all those years ago. I manipulated you into complying with everything I set down for you, you fell into every trap and you fell hard...Wynard was never supposed to go that far, he was only supposed to put your marriage in more trouble than it already was, but then he raped you and I thought that would be the end but no, it was only the beginning, because then a whole _vista _of opportunities opened themselves up to me. Grissom came home. Your husband, here in Vegas, ripe for the picking, all I had to do was turn then screws a little and watch as your world fell apart around you. Everything that's happened to you these past few days, and everything that you will have to deal with now and for the rest of your life, is because of what you did to me, you deserve it..._You _are to blame, it's your fault. It's your fault you were framed. Your fault you were raped. Your fault that Gil Grissom is dead..."

She cut the call and left Sara standing against the wall, eyes closed as Hannah's words assaulted her mind and left her considering the terrible possibility that they could be true...

_Your fault. Raped. Your fault. Framed. Your fault. All your fault. All of it. Rape murder, framed, your fault. Your fault that Gil Grissom is dead. Dead. Your fault. He is dead, and it's all your fault..._

She had been so sure that Hannah had been bluffing. While it had seemed so real on that horrific video, it wasn't, it couldn't be, it hadn't been. Once her reason had kicked in in response to Hannah, she had realised that she was trying to play her, it didn't fit in with anything else that had happened so far, 'pain by proxy' as she had put it, everything was kept at arms length, nothing to connect her to the crimes but the subtle little calling cards she had chosen to leave them, the sodium in the shower, memories of Stacy's death, the message in the bullet too, she would not have done this in a way that so obviously incriminated her, in a way that no jury would ever find her not guilty, whatever her skills were in getting away with murder...

Now however, she was beginning to question herself as she walked back through the lab, her stomach was busy tying itself in knots at the same rate as her brain and she had to use the wall to support herself as a wave of disjointed words and images rushed at her exhausted and vulnerable mind.

She found herself back where she had started, outside the AV lab, Russell, Finn and Morgan gathered around Archie staring intensely at the computer screen while he typed furiously,

"I've got her, I've found her." He cried,jubilantly, "The call traced back to Honeytree lane, on the outskirts of Vegas, it's an abandoned warehouse on the edge of the desert."

"Well, I think it's high time I met Hannah West, she won't be leaving this lab until we have our revenge..." Russell said darkly.

A/N: Really not to sure how I feel about this, I'm not sure if all the characters interacted properly and if I got Hannah right...I'm still debating whether it was right to split Hannah and Sara's conversation with Nick and Greg's reactions, let me know about that...I'm rubbish at writing aftermaths, my apologies, hopefully this was alright, next update should hopefully be up soon but I have absolutely no idea where I'm going with this so we'll see :)


	21. Hate Expectations

**Chapter 20**

Hate Expectations

"Sara."

"Jim."

She found herself pulled into a brief hug and found, to her surprise that she did not reject him. He had always been there for her, a father figure, a father she would have wanted, one that cared about her, and protected her, one that would rather die than let anything happen, as opposed to her own father who had come very close to letting her die by his hands.

"You ready?" he asked, gruffly,

She smiled, out of relief more than anything else, but also sweet recognition. Nothing took him away from who he was, a police captain, a protector, a father not only to his family, biological and professional, but also of this city. He would always be that, caustic, abrasive, rough diamond that had been born of the hot desert and the hotter Hell of Sin City, she loved him for that.

She had half-expected him to ask if she was alright, how she was doing, _what_ she was doing here. She should have known better. He knew her. Knew that she would not be able to sit quietly at home with a cup of herbal tea and wait anxiously by the phone, whatever had happened to her. He knew that nothing would keep her from going with them into the unknown with only one thought on her mind. Gil Grissom. He knew, and he would not try and change her mind or question her abilities, he knew her, and trusted her, more than she was able to trust herself and that in itself meant more to her than she could ever put into words.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry Sara..."

It was the only reference he would allow himself to make to the Hell that she had been through in the last few days, for his sake as much as hers. She nodded, he placed a gentle hand on her arm and then snapped back into his usual self, barking as his team readied themselves.

CSI wise, Sara was insisting on accompanying Russell, Greg and Nick, overkill but they had all refused to stay behind.

"You really think he's still alive?" Nick said quietly,

"I have to..." she whispered, showing the first cracks in her certainty, the vulnerability only allowed to show through for a second before the mask was smoothed once more with practiced perfection.

They arrived at the warehouse in less than an hour, though it felt like a lifetime to the three CSI's as one of them needed to be right and the other two prayed that she was as they allowed themselves to flirt with the idea that she could be...

Brass' team surrounded the enormous building that, despite the scorching heat and the burning yellow sun illuminating it above them felt cold and oppressive, bearing down upon them , condemning them for all of the wrongs that had been done to it. It had clearly been left empty for some time, the bleached paint on the surface was peeling in large chunks exposing the building's red raw flesh to their eyes, making it seem in pain. The glass in the small, high set windows had been chipped away over time, like ravens had pecked mercilessly at its eyes.

The CSI's waited outside, guns drawn, muscles painfully tensed,

"Clear!" a rough voice called from inside.

Clear was one word for it...The warehouse was completely empty, someone had completely gutted it before leaving, the only thing telling them that it had been inhabited some time this decade was the sinister blood pool in the centre of the room.

Guns replaced with torches and the CSIs moved slowly from the outsides working in. They found three small, circular scuff marks that they believed belonged to the tripod. The smooth concrete bore every mark well and they could see drag marks, presumably from a chair. They ended up at the four compass points, staring down at the blood pool in the centre of the room ,their torches each illuminating a quarter of the gruesome, scarlet stain.

It was Russell that went through the formality of first dripping ethanol onto the swab, then gently teasing at the crimson pool, adding phenolphthalein and then a few drops of hydrogen peroxide, the shocking pink colour indicating that it was indeed blood. He then took a second sample and handed it to a uniform that was heading back to Vegas telling him to take it to the crime lab and have them put a rush on the results.

"What now?" Nick asked, quietly, the five of them, the four CSIs and Brass, coming together in the centre of the room, inadvertently, using the blood at their feet as a meeting point.

"I don't know...We wait for the DNA results and take it from there..." Russell said, softly,

"What made you so sure he was..." Greg began, unable to finish his sentence.

"She wouldn't...She wouldn't do that, it would be too much of a risk for not enough reward. Everything she's done to me up to now has been done at arm's length. Nothing tied her to the scene. Wynard, there was nothing tying her to that, at all, it was all Basderic and all Wynard. The frame-up, the rape, none of that had any links to her. Basderic, his death, the only thing that connected her to that was the sodium left in the bathroom, and even then we only realised after the fact. The only thing that told us she was involved was the message in the bullet and she chose that. No prints, no DNA, no evidence on the note, everything was carefully prepared, none of that could have been used against her in court. The execution video was too much of a jump, she's too careful to do something like this, it makes her obviously guilty, getting away with murder is her speciality...'Can I still make you think something happened that never did?'. This would have been the ultimate way she could have played me, make me think that the worst had happened...She's bluffing..."

"If he is still alive...We'll find him." Greg promised, placing a hand gently on her arm, something that she forced herself to allow.

They began wandering through the warehouse, the evidence from their primary crime scene having now been exhausted, more to give themselves something to do than for any real reason. They did not know what they had been expecting, a dramatic showdown with Hannah West, begging for the truth while she threatened them. Grissom unconscious but otherwise unhurt in the centre of the room...Fairytales, dreams born of false hope and a need for them to be true rather than any real evidence.

"Guys..." Sara said, softly, "Come take a look at this..."

In the corner of the room was a noose. Hanging grimly from the ceiling, made of the same cheap cotton that prison bed sheets were made from, the same thing Marlon West had used to commit suicide.

"What is it?" Nick said sharply, hurrying to meet her, torch light spinning dizzyingly around the room in his haste.

She did not speak, just allowed him to witness the simple, sinister shrine Hannah had constructed for her brother.

"What does it mean?" Greg asked, breathlessly, joining them.

"I don't know..." Nick said, beginning to realise just how unbalanced Hannah was, and how dangerous that then made her.

"What is that?" Sara asked, moving forwards and pointing at a small black smudge on the edge of the sheet.

"I'm not sure, ink?" Greg suggested, also taking a closer look,

"That's what I thought..." Sara said, quietly,

Her finger traced the black line, noticing that it was swallowed up by the twists made in the sheet. Reaching up she carefully picked apart the loose knot and pulled the sheet from the ceiling, catching it and examining it closely.

"What are you-" Nick began, looking at Sara as though concerned that she too was unbalanced,

She unravelled the tightly coiled sheet and spread it out on the floor, the black line that she had followed from the outside was now revealed to be a large "X" scrawled across the middle of the sheet.

"What the Hell?" Nick said, staring at it

"Can you grab me the ALS?" she asked, quietly, Greg obliged,

Turning on the UV she slowly moved the light across the large black X, a message, written in the same invisible ink that Stacy had used on Hannah's dress, revealed itself to them and they all started,

_I MURDERED YOUR HUSBAND. CATCH ME, BEFORE PASTS END, AGES TURN, THE DEAD LOVER DIES._

They stared at it for several minutes before Greg breathed, "What does it mean?"

"I don't know..." Sara said, quietly, staring at the cryptic clue, "Could be everything...Could be nothing..."

"Sara, I'm so sorry..." Russell approached them, having eyes for nothing and no-one but the slim, fragile brunette in front of him,

"It's his, the blood belongs to Grissom...I'm sorry..."

A/N: This was a bit of a breather chapter, for me as much as anyone else, all this angst is exhausting :) Hopefully this built up a bit of the plot alright and set up the next chapter OK. Thank you all for reading and reviewing :)


	22. Chasing Rabbits Chasing Ghosts

**Chapter 22**

Chasing Rabbits Chasing Ghosts

Sara staggered back into the apartment, even after the discovery of the blood, and its owner, in the warehouse and what it could mean for Grissom, they had all been forced to concede that they were exhausted, none of them were functioning properly, particularly Sara who had not slept properly in three days. Despite this however, she still had no wish to go home to sleep alone.

"Hey, Sara..." Catherine rose from the sofa immediately and came to greet her, wrapping her arms around the other woman, attempting to lead her to the sofa, "Can I get you anything? Tea? Something to eat? Maybe you should just-"

"Get out..."

"What?"

"Get out of my house Catherine." She said, she had already pulled herself free of Catherine's embrace and she now further broke the connection between them, turning and walking away from her. She knew, or at least, she understood later, that the other woman had been trying to help her, and that she was infinitely grateful for what she had done for her since her arrival in Vegas but right now she was the last person she wanted.

She did not want someone to make her tea, and tuck her in when she went to bed, promising her that her nightmares were just that, everything was just a bad dream that would look better in the morning, she didn't want her to protect her and try and fix her, she wanted to be broken. She wanted to be damaged, she wanted to be the victim for once in her life she didn't want to hide from the Hell that was unfolding around her, she didn't want to cover the bruises and pretend that everything was 'fine'. She was not fine. How could she be? She had lost _everything _and God help anyone who tried to tell her that she would pull through because she was a fighter. She did not want to just 'pull through'. She wanted to fall apart and who gave a damn if that was what 'they' all wanted. 'They' were not here, 'they' were not going to help matters, she didn't care about them, she didn't care about anything anymore. She didn't want Catherine flapping around her and being overly protective and trying to smother her in good cheer, she wanted her to leave her alone so that, for the first time in her life, she could sit in a corner and cry and fall apart without the world watching and pretending that it cared...

"Sara," Catherine said, gently, but with such pity in her voice it made Sara want to throttle her, "I know what's happened, but it will be OK-"

"Maybe it will, maybe it won't but one way or the other it will 'be' without you."

"And where exactly would you like me to go while you attempt to boil the flesh from your bones?" Catherine snapped, also getting angry in response to the younger woman's words.

Sara's face emptied, her brown eyes staring back at her dead and hollow as she whispered, "I don't care, a sleazy motel on Freemont Street or the penthouse of one of 'daddy's' casinos, just get out of my house, now!"

Catherine stared; for all that she had made what had happened into an insult to hurl at the fragile brunette in the midst of an argument, she was genuinely concerned about her, and worried about what she might do to herself if she left. On the other hand, staying here and clearly upsetting her, making her mistrust her, despise her even, was not helpful. Whatever Sara broke tonight the pieces would need picked up in the morning and she would need someone that she trusted to do that, and at the minute the world was full of precious few people that she trusted.

In all honesty she had been waiting for this; she had expected it to happen sooner, she didn't think she would even have finished her first cup of coffee before Sara pushed her away. Things had been different there, she had had Grissom. She had no Grissom; she had no reason, nothing to hold onto, nothing to stop this. She knew that the other woman had serious control issues, before they even started on trust, and that forced her to push people away, to refuse help that she often needed. In the end, she decided that staying her, taking away even more of her control and her trust, was not going to be good for either of them,

"OK...OK, I'll go..." she said, quietly, "You'll call if you need anything?"

"Shockingly, even after being framed, raped and watching my husband shot, I can still work a phone." She snarled, arms folded protectively across her chest.

"Alright..."

Catherine picked up one of the bags she had yet to unpack and made to leave, unable to stop herself she placed a gentle hand on the other woman's wrist and felt the knotted, burning skin below, tense in response to her flinching at the touch and, more importantly, its implications.

She left.

Alone. She was alone now. No-one in this cruel world that even pretended to care about her was with her. No-one here to see her weakness as she slid down the cold wall, tears streaming from her cheeks as she howled in agony, doubled over in pain as her grief took hold of her.

Her chest was burning as she attempted to breathe after she had spent God knows how long crying herself into silence. She was curled protectively on the cold floor slumped against the breakfast bar trying to find _something _to make sense of...Her eyes fell on the half empty coffee cup on the table. His coffee cup. Left there to grow cold in his absence. It had been his favourite; she had bought it for him a few birthdays ago, the deep rich purple colour reminding them both of a case and themselves, the aspects of his life that he cared about the most.

Well...He would not have any use for it anymore...She found her fingers curled, furiously around it and before she knew what was happening it was hurled against the opposite wall, smashing and sending shards of china and cold coffee everywhere. She screamed. In pain. In agony. In anger and in fear.

The table quickly followed the fate of the coffee cup, along with the delicate mirror that hung on the wall, mockingly reflecting back at her the broken chaos that her excuse for a life had descended into; all of the beautifully stacked, pristine, leather bound books that filled the bookshelf behind her found themselves on a short lived flight through the air that caused them to cast the delicate notes within their pages like snowflakes, each of them unique, each of them bearing the words that she knew so well in the hand she wished would hold her now. Her tears were falling once more as the pictures perched so carefully on the raised shelves were torn down, showering her in broken glass, the diamond rain drops piercing her skin and leaving her with little cuts up and down her arms.

She looked down at a picture of them, of the two of them, in Costa Rica, miraculously, the frame and glass were intact, she picked it up, ignoring the mixture of blood and tears that cascaded onto it. She could not believe how happy she had felt back then, right now she could not believe that she knew what happiness was, but then she had had everything...Hannah had been right, Grissom had been her everything, and she had taken him away from her...

...

Russell did not think he had ever seen the lab so quiet and so empty. It was that strange time between shifts, when no-one was really sure who was coming in and who was going out. For about ten minutes at the end of one and the beginning of another shift, Russell could almost forget that he was trapped in the nightmarish machine that was Sin City and pretend that he understood what was going on and that he had not entirely lost his faith in the human race.

Now however it was all he could do not to think that. He could not imagine what Sara was going through, watching the man you love shot to death while you watched on from the other side of a video screen, it was cold and cruel, and it made him want to hunt down Hannah West and cause her more pain than this country's law currently allowed. Add to that what she had already been through these last few days and he became extremely concerned about his young colleagues welfare.

It was no secret that they had become close in his time in Vegas. She was intelligent and charming and her instincts bordered on prophetic. Witty and gentle, but with a fiery passion that drew him to her, she was tenacious and stubborn, but less so than his hot-headed colleague from Seattle, she was far more controlled and concealed far more about herself and her past, the only times she had ever revealed anything about herself had been short, fleeting burst, glimpses of her past before her present caught up and made her hold her tongue. Now she was terrified, in pain and broken. Hurt by something that beyond his control, something that meant he, and everyone else that cared about her could only watch as her life fell apart, knew that they could do nothing to help her...

He found himself at the DNA lab, empty of anyone and found himself playing with the little tube of red blood that they had recovered at the scene, watching as its scarlet contents slid hypnotically from one end of the tube to the other. As he watched he became aware of something that unsettled him, something that felt wrong about the rhythmic action. Instinct, overwhelming gut instinct was telling him that he was missing something. After so long on this job, chasing evidence and facts, they had become few and far between and on the rare occasion that he did get a gut feeling about something, he had learned to listen to it.

"Henry..." he said slowly, still inverting the tube as the curious DNA tech entered his lab.

"Yeah..."

Greg joined them as Russell said, "Have you added anything to this blood tube?" Russell asked slowly, his brain beginning to talk to his gut feeling as he began to figure out what was wrong,

"No...Why?" Henry said slowly, looking concerned that he had done something wrong,

"Then why is it still liquid?"

"It's what?" Greg asked, sharply, also examining the crimson substance inside the tube.

"Hodges!" Russell bellowed, hurrying down the corridor with the innocent little blood tube, Greg at his heels,

"What? It wasn't me." He said, wildly, panicking and jumping to the wrong conclusion as Russell paraded into his lab, brandishing blood at him. S

"No, Hodges, I need you to analyze the blood in this tube..."

"Is that Grissom's?" Hodges asked quietly,

"Yes and you can bloody well bathe in the stuff if you want to." Greg barked sharply, "But first, test it for EDTA."

"EDTA?" Hodges asked, delicately taking the tube of blood from Russell "Anti-coagulant."

"Yes, since, shockingly enough, the blood hasn't coagulated."

"And Henry hasn't added anything to it?"

"No, we checked, Hodges get on with it." Greg snapped, exasperatedly,

Hodges was in the process of analysing the blood while Russell paced and Greg anxiously hovered when Nick entered the room.

"What's going on?" he asked,

"What indeed? I thought I sent everyone home."

"Yes mother you did, most unfortunately, given what's happened the past few days, none of us felt sleep coming particularly easily." Nick snapped, "What's happening?"

"We think there might be anti-coagulant in Grissom's blood." Greg told him softly,

"Cancel that last, we _know _there's anti-coagulant in Grissom's blood. "Hodges said triumphantly,

"Really?" Greg asked,

"No Greg there are fragmented diamonds and gold-dust in it I was just trying to be funny...Of course there is, the blood came back positive for traces of EDTA, which means-"

"Which means that the blood on the floor came from his arm not his neck..." Nick finished softly, barely allowing himself to consider the truth of Hodge's words.

...

Sara was sprawled on the floor of her living room surrounded by sheets of paper, some fresh and smooth, others curled into tight balls and flung randomly around the room in her anger. She had ended up collapsing on her bed and, after soaking her pillow with her salty tears, exhausting herself, she had managed to get a few hours of broken sleep. Once it hit about four in the morning however and she woke up screaming eight times in one hour, she decided that she had slept as much as her eternal plague of insomnia would allow and had forced herself to get up and try and eat something, another essential process she had been ignoring for some time now.

She had quietly cleaned the wreckage of her apartment, putting everything back in its place and cursing herself for falling apart in this way, the cracks had begun to show through again and she had been very tempted to break it once again, just to give herself something to do. In the end, more out of a desperate need to _do_ something than any really want or reason, she had began to play with Hannah's message.

Like the sodium in the shower and the note in the bullet, it meant _something _and even if it was only another twisted attempt to manipulate and play mind games with her, she found that she did not care as she began manipulating her words as substitute for not being able to manipulate her.

Three hours and a decent sized rainforest's worth of paper later she sat staring at the finished product. The idea that this was not the intended message was unthinkable, and yet, now that she had solved it, as was so often the case, she found herself with more questions than she ever had answers.

The phone trilled, not caring who it was she answered, she was craving some kind of human contact, preferably one that was as damaged as she was, to remind her that there were other intelligent beings left on this planet,

"Hey Sara..."

"Nick...Hi..."

"I take it you weren't asleep?" he said, quietly, knowing her uncomfortably well

"No...No I wasn't...What's wrong?"

"The blood we found at the warehouse? Contained traces of EDTA." He paused to let her digest this and as she did, she made a decision,

"Meet me at the chemistry department of WLVU in twenty minutes." She then hung up, if she had been tempted to follow the instructions left in the message _before _her conviction that her husband was still alive had been fuelled by evidence, she was nothing short of magnetically attracted to it now...

...

Nick was waiting patiently outside the chemistry department, whatever harebrained scheme had made Sara decide this was a good idea he could not care less about, she had voluntarily agreed to meet him, he was not about to reject her and push her away...If she ever turned up that was...

When she did pull up and get out of the car, it was eerily familiar, her usual reason for lateness was having become involved in chasing a hot lead relating to their most recent case, and, in order to make up for being, often several hours late, she came bearing gifts. Today was no different, she may not have been two hours late, only about ten minutes, but she came with coffee to appease him.

"Sorry, something came up." She said, offering it to him as a white flag.

He rolled his eyes, "It always does..." he took a sip of coffee as they began to walk up towards the university, "So, why are we here?"

"Hannah." She said, shortly,

"What?" he said, her peace offering being sprayed on the ground in front of them in shock.

"I found the message she hid for me inside the words, it was an anagram..."

"What?" he said, again, not so much having difficulty comprehending the literary manipulation, more the personal.

"Look." She said, impatiently, balancing her coffee cup in the crook of her arm and borrowing the pen from his pocket, using the coffee cup to write on she wrote out Hannah's original message,

_I MURDERED YOUR HUSBAND. CATCH ME, BEFORE PASTS END, AGES TURN, THE DEAD LOVER DIES._

She then began rewriting and systematically crossing off letters until she had unscrambled it to form the new set of instructions,

CHEMISTRY, UNDER "A" CUPBOARD, HEAD LEFT, A MESSAGE UNDER THE RED, OVAL BOAT'S UNDERSIDE.

"That's it _un_scrambled?" Nick asked, unconvinced, "Are you sure you aren't just reading into this too much?" he asked, this earned him a sharp rap over the head with the pen, and his pathetic protestations earned him the ghost of a smile.

It was almost as though none of this had ever happened, as though this was just another day, another case, as though everything was just fine. The only thing that betrayed her were the thin red circles under her eyes and the little scratches that peppered her hands and forearms...

"OK, even if she did leave a message for you...Are you really sure you should be doing what it says? Is that a good idea?" he asked gently, pausing half-way up the stairs heading to the chemistry department.

She stopped too, a few stairs ahead of him and turned to face him, "I'm tired of thinking about what I should or shouldn't do Nick...I've spent my entire life asking myself 'is this a good idea?' In the end, spent so long asking myself that I didn't do anything and I almost lost everything...I don't care if she's waiting up there for me with a gun and a grenade, if there is even the potential that this will lead me to Gil, however unlikely, then I'm doing it, if you'd rather stay here puzzling out whether or not it's a good idea, be my guest."

She turned, he followed her once again and it was a tribute to the strength of their friendship that she made no comment on this as they entered the chemistry corridor.

"Which room is it?" Nick asked, eyeing the dozen or so labs.

Sara lead them towards a room with a faded "A" on the door explaining, "It was Hannah's old room, I remember asking her teacher about her a few years ago after the Stacy Vollmer case..."

"Girl got under your skin..."

"Something like that."

The two CSIs entered the lab and located the cupboard that had a faded laminate of the periodic table on it and did indeed have a little red boat stuffed behind some large bottles of sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid hidden in its depths.

Carefully removing it she found a small note tucked in between the little scarlet planks of the boat's underside, "Still think I'm reading too much into this?" she asked Nick with a wolfish grin and the trace of her old humour.

"What does it say?" he asked,

Standing up Sara opened the note and spread it out on the bench in front of them,

_THE ONLY THING YOU WERE EVER ANY GOOD AT WAS CHEMISTRY AND CODES...ARE YOU STILL?_

_56,6,19,74,1,68,4-5,65-5,1,4-5,6,1,99,16,31,25-7,4-5,4,31,7,9,53,60,65-5,1,4-5,25-7,53,16,16,53,7,80-1,15,1,8,16,15,1,8,86-7,92,16,8,9,39,8,92,86-7,19,53,7,80-1._

"What does it mean?" Nick asked softly, staring at her.

"I have no idea..."

A/N: had a little trouble with this chapter, particularly the beginning, I wanted it to be traumatic and touching but maybe not, anyway, back into my comfort zone now, what do you think of the beginnings of Hannah's breadcrumb trail and what should I do with Grissom, still haven't quite decided and am open to suggestions :)


	23. Dead-Crumbs

**Chapter 23**

Dead-Crumbs

Sara and Nick both stared at the meaningless string of numbers on the page before them,

"Anything?" Nick asked quietly, the message was more than clear in that respect, of the two of them, she was far better at cracking codes.

"No...But there must be something, she wants us to find her, wants us to follow her, wants to have us all dancing to her tune...She must have left a key, a clue, something that tells us how to crack the code."

"'The only thing you were ever any good at was chemistry and codes...Are you still?'" Nick said, reading aloud the words accompanying the string of numbers, "The code is fairly obvious, the chemistry...Why would she say that? Maybe we missed something in the cupboard, with the boat?"

He trailed off and started rooting around in the back of the cupboard, while she continued to stare, transfixed at the code, mind working as Nick, after a thorough examination of the little red boat turned up empty, began carefully sifting through its last resting place, pulling out the large litre bottles of chemicals, even going as far as to open a few of them, trying to find what they were missing.

Irritated at having found nothing, he slammed the door causing the aged periodic table to swing sadly from its one remaining pin before that too gave up and it fell to the floor, the slick laminate marrying beautifully with the sleek tiles and sliding half-way across the room away from them before colliding with a table leg and coming to a halt.

Snarling in frustration, Nick strode over to it and snatched it up, making to bin it before Sara stopped him,

"Wait." She said, sharply, staring with what he considered, alarming intensity at the piece of plastic in his hands.

"What?" he snapped, irritated, but obliging her all the same, slamming it down onto the table in front of them.

"Codes and chemistry Nick..." she said, quietly, the old intensity that always warned him of a major break in the case shining in her eyes,

"You think..." he said, slowly, cottoning on,

"Let's find out..."

She pulled Hannah's message, the aged periodic table and a scrap piece of paper towards her,

"56 is Barium, Ba, 6 is Carbon, C and 19 is potassium, K...Back..." She said slowly, thinking aloud as she worked through, excitement dancing in her brown eyes.

"Keep going." He said, sure that they were right and pulling up a stool to perch at the desk beside her.

She continued matching atomic numbers and substituting symbols until she reached something that troubled her and paused,

"What wrong?" he asked, seeing the confusion and disappointment flicker in her face.

"4-5 doesn't match anything..." she said, quietly,

"Write it out." He suggested, sure that their periodic table theory was sound; it was too much of a coincidence otherwise.

4=Be, 5=B...

"OK, so if we take it as a simple algebra subtraction, Be-B gives E, that fits, no element has the symbol E." He said, confidence renewed,

Smiling, they continued using the periodic table to decipher Hannah's code and in less than twenty minutes their hard work was rewarded,

"Back to where the chess game began, find the missing pieces of your king..." Sara said, quietly, reading the decrypted message aloud,

"What does she want us to do? And where?" Nick asked, not impressed by the further layer of riddles on top of the encrypted words, "Where the chess game began, does she want you to go back to the high school, to the case you first met, Stacy Vollmer's murder?"

"No..." Sara said, slowly, feeling sick as she realised what Hannah wanted, "That was a different game that's already been decided, she means _this _one, the one that began a few days ago, she wants us to go back to The Tangiers, to the hotel room I first met Taylor Wynard in, that's where all of _this _started..."

"The cold bitch..." Nick muttered, knowing she was right and knowing what it would mean to force herself to go back there.

"I say we go." She said, quietly, as though reading his thoughts "Are you coming?"

"Are you seriously asking me this question? After all this time? Of course I'm coming." He said, stubbornly, before hesitating and relenting a little, common sense reminding him where he was, "Should we call it in?"

"Everyone's exhausted, I don't want to worry them if Hannah's just leading us around in circles by the hair for the fun of it...Let's see how far this goes first."

He agreed and they left the university and headed for The Tangiers, Hannah's words ringing in their ears as they tried to guess what had been left for them.

They had entered the hotel and were half-way up the stairs before Nick spotted the fly in their ointment,

"Hang on, we can't get in to Wynard's room, LVP haven't released it yet, it's still a crime scene, not even Hannah could figure out a way to get in there unquestioned."

She paused a moment, considering this before saying quietly,

"We can get into mine, the room next door, I have it booked until Friday..." she told him softly, continuing up the stairs and fishing the card key from her purse as she went on, "We know Basderic had a copy, had access, stands to reason that Hannah did too..."

The words were perfectly casual but her knuckles had turned white in response to the pressure she was exerting on the key card, the idea that either of them had the potential to enter her room without her knowledge or permission caused her stomach to convulse, nauseated.

They arrived outside room 3266 and Sara paused, despite herself her skin was crawling and she was shaking more violently than could go hope would unnoticed by her colleague, as the memories of her last visit to this place haunted her in the hallway,

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked, quietly,

He knew perfectly well that she would hate the pity in his voice and that every fibre of her being would reject the implication of weakness but he knew that he needed to say it, needed to give her the opportunity of a way out, whether he believed she would take it or not.

"Yes." She said, stubbornly, though her hands continued to tremble as she inserted the key card into the slot above the handle and pushed the door open, the little colour there was let draining from her face a she entered the room, a carbon copy of the one next door.

They both stared around themselves in shock and awe as they moved into the room, Sara could see her own disbelief reflected back in Nick's face,

Dotted around the room balanced precariously on spindly little wooden pedestals were twelve empty chessboards. The pieces that belonged to them were piled in a misshapen heap on the four-poster bed in front of them.

"What the..." Nick said, staring around, neither of them had expected Hannah's message to be quite so literal...

He moved to examine one of the boards while she moved to the bed to examine the little mountain of wooden figurines.

"Jesus..." she breathed, comprehension dawning,

"What?" nick asked, knowing by the look on her face that she knew what was expected of them.

She showed him the bases of two pieces, a king and a bishop, "The ordinary pieces are keys, the kings are locks, finding the right key unlocks the king to reveal a clue."

"OK...Twelve chessboards, let's assume one clue per board and standard number of pieces, how many is that?" he asked, weakly, unable to do the calculation himself for morale if nothing else.

"Twelve boards, thirty two pieces each, that's...Three hundred and eighty four pieces in total? And a Hell of a lot of combinations." She said quietly, examining the pile again with the weight of expectation now colouring her judgement.

"She can't expect, Sara this is impossible..." he breathed, flopping onto the bed in exasperation, causing upsetting the mountain behind him.

"No...No it's not as bad as you think..." she said, slowly,

"It couldn't exactly be worse..."

"The pieces are in defined sets, they're not all identical..." she said, examining several at once, "If we can group them together and set them up on the boards as if we were actually going to play them, that cuts the number of combinations down."

"Even so...This is more than a two person job." He said, almost pleadingly,

"I agree..."

"So we call in the cavalry?"

"...We do."

...

Nick called Russell who, in turn, called Greg, Finn and Morgan, and they were all in The Tangiers lobby in less than half an hour.

Before taking them upstairs, Nick and Sara told them about Hannah's last two messages, how they had solved them and where it had led them, neatly summarising the apparent breadcrumb trail Hannah was leaving for them.

"Are you sure we shouldn't learn from Hansel and Gretel and consider not following the breadcrumbs?" Russell asked, gently, "It's most likely a trap of some sort."

"Possibly...Probably..." Sara conceded softly, "I'll understand if you, if any of you, don't want to do this, but I don't have a choice, or at least not one in which I would be willing to consider the alternative."

"There are other ways to do this, to find them, we follow actual forensic evidence as opposed to some twisted trail of breadcrumbs that has been deliberately left for us...If you start dancing to the devil's tune, it's hard to stop." He persisted, quietly,

Not trusting Hannah and not wanting to put them in any danger, they still did not know for sure that Grissom was still alive; he wouldn't put it past Hannah to have planted the EDTA in the blood in order to lure Sara with false hope and empty promises.

"What if it was you?" she said quietly, "What if it was your wife, your granddaughter, someone you loved, and this was it? This is the only evidence we have, forensic or otherwise and wherever it goes, I'll follow it. If you can tell me honestly, if you can make me believe that if this was you, if you were in my position that you wouldn't do this, that you would be able to go back to the lab and ignore this, put everything you have in the hands of forensics and start chasing DNA and trace, then that's what I'll do...I'll leave this, and forget about it, all of it, if you can tell me that you would be able to do that if it was someone you loved at stake..."

Nothing more was said as they all wordlessly followed Nick and Sara up the stairs to room 3266

"Bloody Hell..." Finn muttered, a sentiment shared by all of her fellow colleagues as they entered the hotel room

Briefly, Nick and Sara told them their theory of what Hannah's last riddle had meant, at which point, Russell took charge,

"Twelve chessboards, twelve chess sets, six CSIs, divide beautifully, two sets each?" He summarised, neatly,

They all agreed and picked through the pile, making sure that they each began sorting through different sets.

Once they all had an even thirty two pieces set up upon their boards they began to quickly find clues, Morgan finding the first,

"I've got one. 'Sin', only one of my kings had a word; I'm thinking there's one clue, one word a set?"

They all agreed to run with this for the time being and it ended up playing out correctly, as, in about two hours, each of them found one word in one of their kings.

'Sin', 'Yourselves' 'Clue' 'Is' 'City' 'In' 'Cleanse' 'For' 'Pure' 'Only' 'Thing' 'One'

It took them almost twenty minutes to agree on the order, finally settling for,

"In Sin City, only one thing is Pure, cleanse yourselves for clues." Finn said, following this up with, "Am I the only one who is _more _confused now that we've solved this?"

"No..." Russell, Morgan and Nick said, simultaneously,

"'Pure'..." Greg said, musingly, "Since it's capitalised, that means it's the name of _something _a person, a place..."

"Well done, all these years on this planet and here, you have learned something."Morgan teased,

"My point is, if it's a place, there's a nightclub on The Strip called Pure, and, if memory serves, that's where Hannah's prom was held." He replied, not rising to her.

"Greg, no-one tells you this often enough...But you're a genius." Sara breathed,

...

"It's one of those things that should never really be seen in the cold light of day, isn't it..." Sara muttered, as they slipped onto the empty dance floor of the Pure nightclub.

"I've found that about quite a lot of things in Vegas..." Russell said quietly, setting down his kit in the middle of the floor beneath the enormous glitter ball.

"So...There's a clue here...Something that Hannah's left for us to find?" Greg said, sceptically, looking around the deserted club, the few empty crisp packets and old juice bottles were not inspiring any of them

"Apparently..." Nick said, sharing Greg's scepticism.

"Excuse me, Miss?" Russell said, approaching the barmaid and trying a different tact, "Has anyone been in here during the day? Left something maybe, been acting strangely maybe, anything like that?"

"No." She said, bluntly, arrogantly staring at them and sighing as she felt obliged to add, "She's right," with a nod to Sara, "Part from you lot, no-one wants to see these places by day, I don't have a choice, I'm always in here at this time, no-one's been in or out or acting oddly...Still, if it's a message you're looking for that's easy, no-one would pay any attention to someone leaving one at night, they're all either too drunk or too stoned to notice what anyone else is doing..." she said, flatly "All the kids round here think it's funny to leave glow-in-the-dark messages for one another, I don't since I have clean the damn things in the morning..."

"Glow-in-the-dark?" Russell asked, his brain already working through how this new information tied in to their case, "Do you have UV lights in here?"

"Yeah...Or the 'UV ink' would be pretty useless." She said, sullenly,

"Would you be able to switch them on and turn off the house-lights for us now?" Finn asked, eagerly,

"Sure, why not? This has been the most interesting that's happened to me in here since that drunk hooker started sticking lemons...Anyway..."

"Good to know..." Greg muttered, after making sure she was out-of-earshot in a small cupboard behind the bar.

The harsh yellow lights were extinguished to be replaced by the dizzying pulses of the UV that stayed on for about five seconds before plunging them into temporary darkness once more.

"Is there no way to have them on continuously?" Russell asked, as the tetchy barmaid returned,

"Probably but I don't know it." She shrugged, irritably,

"Alright well thank you very much for your help." Russell said, sincerely, while raising his eyebrows at his team.

The first part of the message was not difficult to find, being splashed across the enormous bare wall opposite the bar in enormous fluorescent letters,

_FIND ourselves four dishonoured GRAVES._

"Shakespeare..." Russell said, quietly, examining the words as they flashed before their eyes, momentarily illuminated by the UV.

"Julius Caesar..." Sara added softly, "But the 'four' is out of place it's not in the original it was added by Hannah..."

"So that suggests what, four quotations to find to form the message?" Nick theorised, cautiously,

They began to hunt through the rest of the club, shouting and marking each quotation as they found them. When they collected them together they asked for the lights to be turned back on as they studied the quotations they had noted down.

_FIND four dishonourable GRAVES._

_All that glisters is NOT GOLD._

_There's DAGGERS IN men's SMILES._

_HELL is EMPTY and all OF THE DEVILS ARE HERE._

They were all from Shakespearian plays, something Sara was sure Hannah had used to pour salt on the wound, referencing Grissom's fascination with them, but quickly realised that they first had to be picked apart before being put together and focussed on the capitalised words first. After a bit of juggling they managed to find Hannah's message,

_The empty daggers are here, not Hell, find the graves of gold in devil's smile._

"What are you thinking?" Nick quietly asked no-one in particular

"I'm thinking there's an old gold mine about a half mile from Devil's Smile." Greg answered, softly,

"And I'm thinking that this leads to more than another piece of a paper trail..." Sara added, staring, transfixed at the words on the paper before them.

"I agree..." Russell said, gently placing a hand on her shoulder, "I'll call Brass and have him gather a team and meet us out there."

...

They all stood beneath the baking sun, staring at the gaping maw of the mine chiselled into the unyielding desert under their feet, descending down into the belly of the Earth.

They had been told, explicitly, in a message left at the entrance to the disused gold mine that if anyone other than the CSI team, and 'of course Captain Brass' entered the mine, that Hannah would not hesitate to put a bullet in Grissom's skull.

This had caused quite a bit of contention, Sara did not want to risk Grissom's life by allowing Brass to go in and secure the scene first. As several of them, including an irate and privately terrified Brass had pointed out, coldly, they had no conclusive proof that Grissom was still alive and he did not want to risk a bullet being put in the sake of one of their skulls in an ambush for the sake of a dead man.

It was finally decided, since Sara was going in one way or the other, and God help anyone who tried to argue with her, to allow the CSIs to enter alone, as they came to the conclusion that, even if Grissom was dead, Hannah was cornered and dangerous and sending a SWAT team in after her would most likely result in a bloodbath.

They cautiously moved through the maze of tunnels, moving deeper and deeper under the desert, following a thin string of lights that danced merrily along the side of the wall, leaving them no option in the path they chose, and fortunately so as they were all lost after the first hundred feet or so in the deadening, disorientating passages.

Sara could feel Nick tensing behind her as they continued and gently squeezed his hand as they picked over the rough ground. She knew that, however much time went on, and however well he hid it, he like her, still bore scars from his burial. After returning from the desert and leaving hospital, it had taken Sara several weeks to be comfortable travelling by car, and even now, she had no love for fully submerging herself in water, something she bitterly resented, having loved diving in San Francisco. Nick, she knew, still struggled with claustrophobia and knew that they horrible, constricting, twisting tunnels of the mines would be killing him. She hoped that by the brief contact she had initiated between them, that he understood even a fraction of what him being here meant to her. The small squeeze back in response told her that he did.

They continued to follow the string of lights, travelling further and further among the underground catacombs, becoming tangibly tenser with each step until they reached a large stone chamber with several tunnels branching off it, like arteries travelling off to different organs of the beast's body, and their electric guides stopped.

The chamber had only one thing inside.

"Gil..." she breathed,

She ran forwards, not caring if he was surrounded by barbed wire and landmines, the adrenaline that had been building and surging through her veins the deeper into the heart of the desert they moved drained from her as she collapsed into him, not knowing whether to laugh or cry as he instinctively wrapped her arms around her, pulling her close to his chest, holding her as she trembled with suppressed emotion, murmuring incoherently to her as he stroked her hair and she clung to him like life itself.

They had only been together for a few, brief seconds when the lights around them went out simultaneously, plunging them all into total darkness as terror took over and people screamed and recklessly drew their weapons.

Yet, for all the fear, and all the confusion that now swelled within the taut, claustrophobic cave, she was only aware, only _really _aware of two things,

Her husband's warm embrace and the cold touch of a gun pressed into the small of her back.

A/N: I understand that this was very plot heavy but hopefully all of the scenarios with Hannah's breadcrumbs were reasonably plausible and made sense, (they became increasingly difficult to think up!) and this chapter was tense enough to keep you engaged, can't quite believe what this has turned in to so thank you all for sticking with it so far! Reviews/Thoughts welcomed :)


	24. Canaries and Coal Mines

**Chapter 24**

Canaries and Coal Mines

"Sara..." he murmured holding her and savouring every atom of her being, as he fought to make her understand the feelings he could never put in to words.

In the suffocating darkness it was easy to pretend that they were alone, that the only demons he had to protect her from were the ones in her nightmares. He knew that was not true. That was the only reason that, at the same time his spirits had soared at the sight of her, his heart had sunk into his stomach. If he was going to die down here, he did not want her to be there, and while he had wanted, had _needed _to see her at least once more before that occasion, he did not want that to be on anyone else's terms bar theirs, particularly not Hannah West's...

"I know...I know." She whispered burying into his chest as soft tears ran down her cheeks and the fun was jabbed harshly into her back, forcing her to her feet and forcing her to move away from him.

She wanted to say something, to tell him that she loved him, to make him understand how much he meant to her but even in her head the words sounded hollow and empty and, as the rough stone wall she was slammed in to took pleasure in reminding her at that moment, she was not in a film and, at this moment in time she realised why those moments when the heroine was pulled from the main character and made an impassioned speech declaring her undying love for him while she wrestled with her captors had always seemed so forced and devoid of emotion. In the all consuming darkness she was having trouble coherently stringing two words together, never mind a bloody three minute monologue, the only things telling him how she felt, what he knew, were her clawing fingers, searching desperately for the reassuring warmth of his touch and their refusal to release his outstretched hands until they were forced to.

"So nice of you to join me." Hannah whispered venomously in her ear before firing two decisive shots.

If panic had ensued in response to them being plunged into the thick darkness, it was nothing to the terror that swelled within the constricting cave as instinct took over and they all hit the ground, clustering together in a confused tangle of bodies.

The lights were restored without warning and it was Brass who recovered and reacted first, pointing his already drawn weapon at Hannah with a cop's instinct, his grip on the gun rock solid as he aimed it steadily between her eyes.

"Now, now Captain, play nice." She taunted, swiftly revealing the gun she had been concealing behind Sara's back and pressing it deliberately against her throat, "Or I'll take off her pretty little head...Believe me, _no-one _wants that..." she said sweetly as Brass lowered the gun, looking at Hannah with an expression that left none of them in any doubt that, given his way, the contents of _her_ 'pretty little head' would be decorating the black walls of the chamber, "Yet..." she added in an undertone to Sara, before commanding loudly,

"Right, all of you, guns, now."

They all reluctantly obliged, sliding their weapons across the rough stone floor of the chamber. Hannah, carefully keeping her own gun trained on Sara as she collected them together in the mouth of one of the tunnels branching off from the cave they were in and leading deeper underground.

"See...Not so difficult..." she simpered, returning to her place by Sara, "Now, before we begin properly, first things first. Nick, Greg, so good to see you, both of you remember your old supervisor I'm sure..." she smirked, "As for you three." She continued, indicating Finn Russell and Morgan, "I don't believe have ever met the man you've all given up so much for. Understandable I suppose, difficult to meet one of your colleague's partners when they don't even live on the same continent never mind the same city. Still, since that colleague is Sara, it probably wouldn't have made much difference if they had lived next door, very private woman our Sara is, so allow me to help." She turned to the figure, still bound and kneeling in the centre, "D.B Russell, from Seattle, now has your old job." She told him mockingly, "Julie Finlay, Finn, has Catherine's; Morgan Brody has Conrad Ecklie's DNA and not much else..." she said, grinning, she paused, moving away from Sara and towards her husband as she continued, "And _this _this is the infamous Dr. Grissom..."

"You've got no reason to keep them here Hannah, you don't need them-"Sara whispered quietly, feeling sick at the thought of any of them getting hurt because of her.

Hannah turned on her, snarling, in a venomous hiss, "Pathetic...I expected better of you, this, in case you have thus far failed to notice, is not a Bruce Willis film, _this _is real life, don't start playing the hero and the hostage negotiator, make me feel as though I've wasted my talents on you." She spat, "I don't _need _them, and that's exactly why they're useful to me, if I feel you need a little _persuasion _then there are several bullets with their names on them..."

"_That _is pathetic." Sara hissed, drawing the shocked eyes of several of her colleagues, "Frankly, I would say I expected better of you, but that would require me to have a higher opinion of you than I do at present, whatever 'talents' you have are wasted, and one on this planet can do what you're doing now, wave around a gun and think that buys you respect and control..._That _is pathetic..."

"What?" she said, laughing almost hysterically, the cold sound filling the chamber, the casual effect ruined by the betrayal of her hand shaking on the gun, "You think that your deep psychological insights will make me throw away the fun and let you all go skipping off down the tunnels hand in hand?"

"No, I thought my 'deep psychological insights' would remind you that you're supposed to be intelligent."

Hannah struck her across the face with the gun causing Brass to snarl and start towards her, to be restrained by Nick and Greg, before bending low and breathing, "You have _no _idea what I am capable of..."

"No, but I'm beginning to realise it's a lot less than I originally thought..."

Hannah pushed herself away from her in disgust and began to stalk around the perimeter of the chamber like a panther pacing, trapped in a cage at a zoo, being slowly driven insane by its suffocating prison.

Sara watched her carefully, acutely aware that Hannah was no longer a child, at twenty; she was an angry, unbalanced and unpredictable young woman who had lost everything and blamed Sara for that, making her dangerous.

"If anyone has cause to be disappointed here, it is me...You've walked blindly into every trap I've laid for you, all the way up to willingly leading your friends to their deaths in this mine, miles underground with about as much chance of being found and rescued as there is of me failing high school chemistry."

"I can't imagine what it must be like to see the world through your eyes Hannah...but if that comes at the price of blinding over-confidence, I don't think I want it...Understanding we're not intellectual equals is one thing, but how thick do you think I am? Did you really believe that I would be as naive as to think that if I followed the trail of breadcrumbs that I would just find him down here, gift-wrapped with no strings attached? I've done this job for too long, so please, credit me with something more than you're currently doing..."

"Oh I credit you with that Sara, and much more, I would go as far as saying that we _are _intellectual equals, and that's what's so _frustrating..._In this beautifully orchestrated chess game I've constructed for us, you've made stupid, reckless mistakes that I wouldn't expect someone with half of your IQ to make...It's irritating."

"Someone with half my IQ wouldn't have stood to lose a fraction of what I did and have...You have to be willing to make sacrifices in chess to win, and I wasn't prepared to play that way..."

"The pit falls of human nature..."

"Indeed...And you've fallen foul to a few of them yourself Hannah..." she said quietly,

"Of course, I am human after all..."

"Somehow I doubt that..." Brass snarled,

"You're doing this because of human nature...You're doing this because you want someone to blame for all of the things that have gone wrong in your life. That's human nature, we all think that we're far too important for senseless, random acts of violence to happen to us, we want there to be a reason, we want there to be someone to blame, something to punish, something we can justifiably take out all of our anger on and sometimes there isn't. If this job teaches you anything it's that, while human beings can dream up an infinite number of ways to hurt other people, the world can be just as cruel and sometimes there just isn't anyone to blame..."

"Sometimes..." she said, quietly, "You're right, sometimes there isn't anyone to blame...This is not one of those times. The person responsible is sitting opposite me feeding me bullshit philosophies that mean nothing to me and nothing to Marlon."

"Just because you blame me doesn't mean you should...If you want someone to hold responsible for Marlon's death...I suggest you find a mirror..."

"I _loved _Marlon!" She screamed, "It was not my fault that he died, it was you, you poisoned him against me, you made him hate me, you took me away from him and left him with nothing_ that's _why he killed himself, it was your fault!"

"Nine times out of ten on this job, I've found that people die for love over hate. Yes, you did love Marlon, and he probably loved you too, you were his sister after all, but he didn't kill himself because of that. He killed himself because he blamed himself for Kiera's death and for what you had become, and for what you did because you loved him..."

"No...He wouldn't, he wouldn't have done that to himself, wouldn't have done that to _me _for that cheap little slut, he'd only known her for two minutes..."

"That doesn't matter Hannah...He could have known her for two minutes or two years, fact of the matter is, he thought he loved her, he knew he loved you, and when you killed her for him, he lost both of you. That destroyed him, _you _destroyed him Hannah, if anyone's to blame for his death, it's you-"

"No!" she screamed, "You, you won't blame me and you won't blame Marlon for what you did, you killed him, you were responsible for his death, you took away _everything _ I had ever loved, and that had ever loved me back, I was left with nothing, nothing to live for, except this, except you. Your fancy words and all of your insights wont' save you now, I am going to make you suffer the way I suffered, I am going to kill your husband and I am going to make you watch and then I'll tell you that it was your fault, and I am going to watch as you fall apart and you feel nothing but pain, and then, then I will have _justice._"

"Justice?" she breathed, "You call _this _justice? This barely covers revenge never mind justice...And say it did, what do you expect to get from this? From watching me suffer? As the expert between the two of us on self-served justice, it's not all it's cracked up to be. Everyone believes that they can get themselves some self-bought justice, kill, torture, maim, whoever they believe to be responsible for their suffering, that that will bring them closure and will help them move on and deal with whatever's happened to them...It's bullshit. I've seen both sides, judges and juries and people taking things into their own hands thinking that it will save all of their problems...God knows, I'd seen enough of this 'system' before I became a part of it, I was under no illusions as to what it promises and what it took away when the man who had spent my childhood beating and raping me, half-killing my mother every other day, was allowed to die a victim while we were both chewed up and spat out and left to our own devices...You think you have _any _right to demand justice? What justice did I get? Years of pain and torture and fate's idea of justice was allowing me to watch him die peacefully in his sleep, knife straight to the heart didn't feel a thing? So you think you'll get closure and that you'll feel better by making me watch my husband die, or by putting a bullet in my skull then you go ahead..."

Hannah watched her quietly, there were silent tears streaming down her cheeks but her voice had been as empty of emotion as it could be her words sincere nothing but the truth.

"Then why do you do this job? If there's no such thing as true justice, why bother?"

"Because people deserve the truth, they deserve to know what happened, and they deserve to see those responsible punished for it. True Justice is an ideal, a concept, it will never be anything more than a theory especially now where the system exists to exploit itself, money-grabbing defence attorneys and corrupt judges, but it gives people something, watching judges and juries play God with the hearts and minds of men, it will never bring them back and it will never numb them to their loss but it will help, it helps more knowing that people understand, that they agree that the bastard you hate for what they did, you're not the only one who sees a monster, that helps more than putting a bullet in him alone...That's why I do this job, that's enough to justify me doing this job...Don't stand there and tell me that what you're doing, and what I do are the same thing, that they achieve the same end, this is revenge, an eye for an eye, and it won't get you what you want..."

"And you know what I want now do you?" she shrieked hysterically, pointing a trembling gun at her as her hand twitched and she breathed, "Maybe it's just the satisfaction of watching you scream and suffer, if only for those two minutes, maybe I don't want 'justice' or 'revenge' maybe I'm just a twisted little sadist who wants to cause you pain? Maybe all I want is to know that you'll spend the rest of your life in agony because of what I've done to you? There is _nothing _I can't and won't do to you Sara...I've had you framed for murder, I've had you _raped, _I've had dirty little secrets that you kept hidden under wraps for thirteen years exposed and forced you to confront a past with all of the ghosts and demons that you've been haunted by, and avoided for years, there are no lengths I won't go to, just to make you suffer so what makes you so sure that this is about anything?" she snarled, staring at her, the gun pointed shakily at a point over her heart,

"Maybe, maybe not...I think you've gone in to this looking for something more than causing pain, you've planned too well for that, and if it were true, then that execution video would have been real..." Sara breathed softly in response, ignoring the gun and watching her,

"Oh it will be...Don't you worry about that...But doing it that way, it just wasn't _real _enough. _This _is real, this is what I wanted, you still had hope before, you can't deny something you see with your own eyes, however hard you try...I wanted to watch you seeing him die, I wanted to witness the realisation that he's gone, that you have nothing, you can't get that from a grainy video..." Hannah sneered, mockingly twisting the knife by bringing up what she had already done to Sara, what she knew would plague her for years to come, that she hadn't slept properly in days, that people she had known for years she now could not bear to be near.

"I don' t think that's what you want, because I think you know what you'll get out of that...When you killed Kiera to punish Marlon, to punish her for taking him away from you, what did you feel then?" she whispered softly, staring intensely into her eyes.

"I...Good, I felt good." She said, defiantly, though her voice trembled as badly as her hand.

"Really? You felt 'good' that you had killed another human being for nothing? Nothing but your own petty, irrational jealousy?"

"It wasn't for nothing-"she began, weakly,

"Yes it was." Sara snapped, "In fact, it was for less than nothing, seeing as how he killed himself for it..." she said, harshly watching her blanche before continuing in a softer tone, "This, this won't bring him back, it won't make you feel any better and it wouldn't have been something that he would have-"

"Oh so now you know how he would have felt?" she screamed, hysterically, pulling away again, "You know how my dead brother would have felt about me punishing the person responsible for his death?"

"I don't _know_, but I can have a fairly close guess..." Sara covered cautiously, "I don't think he would have wanted you to sacrifice everything you have for some psychotic revenge scheme that won't help him, won't help you, and actually doesn't even _exist _because you know that I wasn't responsible for his death...He's gone Hannah, he' dead, he doesn't give a damn if you build a bloody temple for him with your bare hands, he won't know about the people you've killed and manipulated to get to this point, pulling the trigger won't change anything...But if he could, if he knew what you had done in his name, what do you think he would do? He killed himself because you murdered Kiera for him and you had some sort of reason behind that, delusional and psychotic but a reason nonetheless, how do you think he would feel knowing that you had mindlessly tortured and killed complete strangers for yourself and used him as an excuse?"

Hannah stared at her, then gun held loosely in her hand that was shaking and twitching violently as she swayed on the spot. She had thought she was in control, she had spent so much time agonizing over codes and hidden messages and manipulating strangers into hurting her, she was never given a choice, never given the chance to do anything other than what she had wanted, figuring out how to push buttons and get under her skin that she had never imagined that it could work in reverse, that she could allow herself to be manipulated by the other woman.

And yet here she was, the other's words having done what a fully armed SWAT team could not have done; controlled her. She doubted herself, doubted what she wanted; doubted what she _knew _for the first time in her life.

She was right, Sara had seen something that she could not, had understood what she had been unable to contemplate. She had been wrong. She had done all of _this _for nothing, the very thing that had driven Marlon from her she was now doing again for her own personal justice claiming that she wanted justice for him, saying that she was getting justice by doing the very thing that had caused him to kill himself in the first place...

And then she realised that she didn't care...She didn't care about any of that, she didn't care that Sara was right and that none of this would help Marlon, none of this would bring him back, or ease her pain, bring her closure, or anything that she had originally wanted. She hated the woman opposite her, and if all she gained by her next actions was her pain, then that was more than enough as far as she was concerned.

"It doesn't matter anymore...Whether I'm doing this for Marlon or for me, whether or not it makes anything better, makes it easier to get up in the morning, whether it changes anything...I have to do it now..." she said, moving slowly into the centre of the room to stand by Grissom.

"No, Hannah stop, what are you-You don't have to do this, Hannah listen to me." Sara began terrified, sure that she had convinced the other woman against this and now petrified that she had failed and what the consequences of that would be.

"Yes I do, I don't have a choice, I've come too far, given up to much...You were wrong when you said that I was sacrificing everything I had for this, for nothing, I wasn't sacrificing anything, I haven't got anything left to lose...Nothing to lose and everything to gain...Nothing for me to live for, everything for him to die for..."

""Hannah, please, no, don't, please, anything, anything just-"

Her pleas fell on deaf ears and were cut short by the loud gunshot that echoed around the walls of their underground prison, mingling with Sara's scream as blood burst in a scarlet fountain, coating the walls and painting the cold, black stone floor a deep crimson as the gaping wound wept ruby tears...

A/N: First off apologies for the mammoth chapter I didn't want to split it :) I hope this was OK, I realise that, considering how much I had built it up, I could never really do anything in this chapter that wasn't an anti-climax so I decided not to even attempt a crazy all guns blazing chase sequence through the tunnels as it didn't fit either of the characters and hope that this was somewhat decent as a final showdown piece, let me know what you thought of this! I'm a little unsure...As ever, your reviews are greatly appreciated, thanks for reading!


	25. Life After Death

**Chapter 25**

Life After Death

Sara winced slightly as the salt water stung at the ragged flesh on her feet. He glanced up at her, dunking the soft piece of cotton in the dish at his feet that was slowly being dyed a soft red colour. She nodded almost imperceptibly and he continued. She could not believe how something like this could be so surreal and yet, so normal at the same time.

He watched her carefully, concern in his eyes as she closed hers, flashing back to that damn mine, remembering the horror of what had happened and the terror that had flared within all of them.

After she had spent all that time talking her down, taking her from being completely in control of herself and the situation to doubting everything that she had ever believed and known, they had all been sure that it was over, that she would have given herself up...No-one had been expecting the gunshot...

"You OK?" he asked quietly, as her large tear filled eyes snapped open again as she wrenched herself firmly back into the present.

She nodded without speaking, not trusting herself to open her mouth. In truth she was exhausted, but she could not sleep, not until she knew, one way or the other...

The screams of shock and terror that had mingled with her own, the combined efforts of which could not entirely drown out the awful finality of the gunshot, continued to fill her head, taunting her as they increased in volume and intensity causing her to uncontrollably cover her ears with her hands.

"Hey, hey, it's OK, Sara you're OK..." he murmured quietly, feeling her tremble beneath his fingers as he gently caught hold of her wrists and brought them back down into her lap once more.

"I'm not though, am I?" she choked, the tears she had been determined not to shed in front of him, ignoring her protests and falling from her eyes,

He stared at her, feeling helpless. This was one of the only things she could have said that would have rendered him speechless, she never admitted that she wasn't coping, that she wasn't dealing with whatever Hell unfolded around her, she would never say that she couldn't handle it. In the last few days she had woken up unconscious and terrified in a hotel room next to a dead man she had no memory of, been accused of murdering said dead man, realised she was being framed, remembered that the bastard had raped her, watched her husband executed in front of her by a psychotic genius and all the while she was 'fine'.

He had known as well as she did that she had been lying, no human being could go through all of that and come out fine, but she had consistently told them all that she would be OK, now that she had admitted to him that she was not 'fine' he realised how damaged she really was...

"You will be." He whispered quietly, trying to offer what little comfort he could and returned to bathing her feet, still in disbelief that she could have let them get in such a state.

When he had managed to drag her away from the mine telling her that there was nothing more that she could do for him and taken her home, the first thing he had noticed was the blood pooling in her socks and had insisted that they deal with that.

In truth, as well as being genuinely concerned for her welfare, he thought that it would help both of them and give them something to focus on besides what they had both lost. The relatively mundane task giving him purpose, making him feel that he was doing _something _that would benefit someone...

"How?" she breathed, "How will I ever be OK? Greg...He's gone-"her voice cracked as she spoke the words, barely able to breathe through the choking sobs that over took her.

"Don't-"he said, also struggling to control his grief and terror, "Don't, you can't say that..."

She remembered being dragged from the mine by helping hands who told her that she could not help and that she needed to be checked out, while barely being able to make themselves leave him as she hysterically told them that she could not leave him, she could not leave him to die in there alone. She remembered being ushered out into the harsh sunlight and collapsing to the sun-baked desert earth and feeling someone's arms, that she later recognised as Catherine's, around her as she cried, making incoherent protestations about returning to that damned chamber...

"Why not?" she demanded, "Why not? He got shot didn't he?" the anger that flared irrationally in her did not last long and only intensified her pain, "I'm sorry Greg, I'm sorry I just...I can't get it out of my head..." she whispered, desperately,

"I know..." he breathed, "I know, I'm so sorry Sara...He didn't have a choice, she would have killed everyone in that room, she was out of control, there was nothing you could have said or done to prevent it, I thought you had got through to her, I thought she would stop, but she wouldn't, it was...There was nothing else that could have been done..."

"I know...I know and I don't blame him, I never could I just...His eyes, I can't stop seeing his eyes, staring at me, begging me not to leave him and I did, I just left him there..."

"You had to-"

"No I didn't I had to stay with my husband while he-"

She could not bring herself to finish that sentence, not least because she was being forced to relive everything...

She watched as Hannah moved into the centre of the room, standing in front of him and pointing the gun deliberately over his heart. Her own screams and pleas, falling on deaf ears and strangely silent in the flashback as she sank to her knees realising that she had failed, that whatever she had said, Hannah had made up her mind, had made up her mind all those years ago when she had told her about her brother's death, who she blamed, and how she had spent all these years planning her revenge.

There was nothing that would stop her, she had only been living for one thing, and she had been a fool to think that a twenty minute conversation in which she spouted empty philosophies about truth and justice would have changed anything; she was always going to do what she had set out to do. She had led them down into that mine with only one thing on her mind and Sara now realised that the most she could have hoped for was Grissom becoming the only casualty.

That tiny nod of his, at the opposite wall, at his fate, the way his eyes closed momentarily as he bowed his head and she was sure that he knew what was coming and he would gladly accept it in exchange for the life of his wife and the people that he loved gathered in that chamber.

Despite that she had still jumped and screamed when the gunshot had ripped through the room.

It had not come from Hannah's gun however, but Brass. Undercover of the chaos Sara had created he had crawled over to the pile of guns and grabbed one, pointing it at Hannah, the only thing stopping him from pulling the trigger was Grissom. He had nodded slowly and in that instant Brass had been forced to take a decision.

She was right, she did not blame Brass, she couldn't...She blamed Hannah, and a Hell of a lot of good that was doing her now. She was dead. Gone. Where none of this could ever hurt her...

When she became aware of the present day once more she was on her knees on the floor, shaking, as Greg wrapped his arms, tentatively around her and they held one another, trying to offer the other some comfort.

They lay together in companionable silence for hours, being unable to let the other go even after their tears had ran out, until the phone rang, interrupting them, Greg answered it...He paused and, after hanging up said,

"That was Catherine...We need to go to the hospital."

...

They hurried into the hospital, weaving their way through the cold, clinical corridors with an ease that alarmed them both until they ran into Catherine and Nick who had agreed to go to the hospital and wait for news, both of them knowing what being trapped in here would have done to Sara, especially given what had happened to her in the last few days.

Catherine briefly pulled Greg into a tight embrace before enveloping Sara in her arms as she whispered, "He's going to be OK."

She could not believe it, and again felt the adrenaline and energy drain from her and Catherine had to support her, half-crying half-laughing in relief as she held the younger woman.

"Do you want to see him?" she asked, softly,

She could only nod as Catherine guided her over to his room before backing off and giving her privacy, returning to Nick and Greg as Sara tentatively pushed her way into his room.

"Hey..." she breathed, huskily.

She had not allowed herself to believe that this could be possible. Hannah had been right, she could not begin to relive the emotions that had coursed through her as she had watched him collapse in the centre of the chamber, the blood blossoming from his chest, she had been sure that had been it, she had lost him, he had sacrificed himself to save her and that was something she would have to try and live with for the rest of her life, something that she would never be able to forgive herself for.

She was so shocked and so emotional, that she could not feel _anything_ she was numb to everything around her, seeming to experience the world through a thick, opaque veil that she could not pierce as she found herself standing by his bedside, collapsing into him, falling apart as her shoulders shook with suppressed emotion.

He curled a hand around her shoulders, holding her to him as she attempted to come to terms with the thing he knew she would have been unable to allow herself to dream. He watched her carefully, stroking her hair and murmuring in a hoarse whisper, trying to calm her.

Eventually she managed to choke, "I think this is supposed to work the other way around...You're in hospital..."

He laughed weakly, causing himself to cough and her to spring up alarmed, "I'm fine." He said, gently patting her arm. Frankly, after everything she had been through he was amazed that she was still standing, never mind offering emotional support.

"I can take care of you now..." she said, softly, no more playing the victim, no more feeling useless, she had him back, she had him, and she was not going to give him the chance to get lost again.

"Hannah?" he asked, quietly, trying to make sense of the blurred memories that were his only recollection of the last moments in the chamber,

"Dead." She replied, shortly, a bitter edge to her voice.

"You don't sound too pleased about that...It's over..." he told her quietly, gently wrapping a hand around her waist as she perched on the end of his bed.

"It shouldn't have been...Death was too good for her..."

"Listen, what's done is done-"

"And it was very nearly done differently, I nearly lost everything, you nearly died, and that would have been my-"

"No." He said, sharply, watching her wince and continuing in a gentler tone, "No...Never that, whatever happened or nearly happened or didn't happen in that cave, I chose, it was never your fault-"

"I brought you down there, all of you, I drove her to-"

"Stop...Listen to yourself Sara, what did you tell her in that cave? Marlon killed himself; he committed suicide because of what she did, nothing to do with you. What she's put you through in these last few days has been unforgiveable, but _none _of it, has been your fault." He said, sternly, "Hey..." he said quietly, tenderly cupping her face in his hand, "I love you Sara...Whatever got us in to that position, whatever happened, whatever it came to, if there was anything I could have done to have saved you, I would have done it, as I know you would for me...It's done, it's over, it's over, you're OK, it's over..."

She clung to him, and they ended up curled on the bed together, arms around one another, their bodies entwined,

"We'll get through this Sara...We'll be OK..."

"I know..."

A/N: My apologies for torturing you all in this chapter, it would probably have worked better on camera but I did my best to translate the twist onto paper, I didn't want to simply kill Hannah or Grissom because neither of them would have been unexpected, hopefully this was and it was a plausible twist :) Thank you all for sticking with this crazy story for as long as you have, I never expected it to get to this point when I started and it's been written on instinct and impulse so I would love to hear your thoughts on this chapter and as this story as a whole, thank you all for your reviews and your reading, hopefully you've enjoyed this!


	26. Dying Truth

**Chapter 26**

Dying Truth

Sara tensed slightly at the unexpected touch as she felt his hand placed comfortingly on her shoulder, he knew better than to remove it however and watched as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath as the wind snatched at her hair.

He knew why she had come back, knew why she had had to, knew her too well to let her come alone.

"Thank you..." she whispered, quietly, without opening her eyes.

"For what?" he asked softly, placing his other hand on her free shoulder and pulling her close to him, savouring her warmth and the way her chest rhythmically rose and fell beneath the arms he draped, protectively across it.

"For coming back here, for coming with me...I knew you didn't want to, it was selfish of me to let you come but I needed you..." It was about the only vulnerability she had ever shown towards him, towards anyone, admitting that she needed another human being, that she needed him.

He placed a gentle kiss on her neck before answering, "There isn't anything I wouldn't do for you Sara, whatever it means for me, you know that, and I know you feel the same way about me..."

"I do, really I do, I just..." she faltered, unsure of how to say what she wanted to, what she had to.

"It's alright, I understand...It's OK to admit that you need someone, it's OK to say that you're the victim, that you need help, that you need to let someone else make the sacrifices for a change...I'm glad I came, and not just for you, we both needed this..."

She smiled softly, feeling a little better at the gentle reminder that he knew her, knew her well enough to know how she felt and what he could say to remind her that she was human and that she needed help sometimes, that it was OK to be afraid and to ask the impossible of the people who could not say no, but she stilled felt that she had to tell him, for her own sanity if nothing else,

"We live to learn. When Natalie...That night, out here, under that car, afterwards, I was terrified to do anything that would have made me remember, made me relive it...I tried to ignore it, to do what I always do, to run away, to hide from the desert, in _Vegas._" She laughed humourlessly at the bitter irony of this before continuing, "I couldn't...Obviously. I thought that I couldn't do any of it anymore, that I couldn't be me because me had had enough of everything. I felt haunted in my own skin and I couldn't explain it to you because I couldn't explain it to myself, I was falling to pieces, coming apart at the seams and I, I didn't know what to do...I tried to get away from everything that I was, everything that made me me, I almost lost everything that makes it worth being me...It was only when I was on the other side of the world with nothing left that I realised how stupid I had been. I realised that who I was wasn't the problem, it was the way I had dealt with it, or not dealt with it to be more accurate...I never had closure for anything, I never dealt with anything, I just pretended that it had never happened, until even that didn't work anymore...The ghosts I had buried for so long all came back to haunt me at once...They destroyed me..."

"Not quite, thank God..." he breathed softly,

"No, not quite...I realised that I could choose, that it was up to me, not Natalie Davis or Hannah West or my father or my past, _I_ could choose..."

"I'm glad you chose this."

"I'm glad I chose this too...I'm glad I chose you, I'm glad I chose to become so damned dependent on a middle-aged, bug-obsessed ex-CSI that everything I had and am fell apart because of one little bullet..." she laughed weakly through her tears.

She turned around to face him and he wrapped his hands gently around her waist, brushing her forehead lightly with his lips before saying,

"And I would choose said little bullet for the crazy, stubborn workaholic woman that I call my wife and who I stupidly fell in love with and even more stupidly chose not to spend every second I have left with every single time...I would choose you, always."

"It's funny...You would have thought, after everything that we've seen, all these years of doing this job, that we would have learned that life is precious...Some more so than others...You know, they say that it's simple, either everyone matters, or no-one does, but whoever 'they' are, they're wrong, some people matter more than others...Before I had _this, _I couldn't understand that...I said that I would never be able to take a life, I didn't understand how Catherine, or my mother for that matter, could, comfortably, if it came down to protecting someone that they loved, to stop someone from...I understand now, life _is _precious, buy depending on what you choose to do with it..."

Tears were streaming down her cheeks without permission but she made no attempt to stop them as a confused tangle of memories from the last few days overwhelmed her. She could not quite bring herself to believe everything that she had done and everything that had been done to her in these last few days; how she was still standing she was not quite sure...

"Come on..." he said, quietly, leading her back to the car.

They both paused to look out at the great expanse of desert that stretched back to claim the horizon in front of them. The innocent entrance to the time whose black heart and twisted maze of tunnels extended for miles beneath them, something that from the surface, was impossible to tell, as was the secret that it now protected, just one more in the infinite viper's nest of hidden truths and lies that the all-consuming desert contained. Hiding how many bodies? How many lives ruined and destroyed out here, the ghosts buried in the hot earth where they would be held indefinitely...The baking yellow ground above calm and innocent, concealing the pit of secrets they would never find below...

...

Catherine wandered into the reception of the crime lab, the familiar pang of longing tugging at her heart strings as she re-entered the familiar world she had left again trying to wrestle with herself to see if she had any regrets, something she swore she would live her life without.

As she did she saw a slim woman with large, brown eyes hovering by the desk, clearly looking out of place,

"Can I help you?" Catherine asked, pausing and reminding herself that she did not work here a second too late,

"I'm not sure...I'm looking for Sara, Sara Sidle?" she said, looking with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion,

"I don't think she's here." Catherine replied, a little wrong-footed by this. In the twelve years she had worked in Vegas she could not remember anyone ever coming calling for Sara, the brunette was far too private to allow anyone from her past to meet her at work and risk running into her colleagues, something Catherine bitterly resented,

"Oh, thank you." The woman replied, quietly, turning to leave.

"Can I pass on a message? Tell her that you came looking or anything?" Catherine asked, having one last stab at learning something about her enigmatic ex-colleague who, she realised now that she actually thought about, she knew depressingly little about.

"No, it wasn't important." She replied, a faint smile tugging at her lips that was eerily familiar to the blonde.

"Alright then..." Catherine muttered the now empty reception as her quarry left her.

Shaking her head, she moved through the lab to the break-room where she found most of the current graveyard shift, minus Sara and, curiously, Russell.

"Cath!" Greg and Nick both greeted her, jumping to their feet and helping to relieve her of the food and coffee she had brought them all,

"Hey." She said, smiling, "Weird thing happened to me a second ago-"

"See that proves you've been away too long," Nick told her, smirking, "Weird things in Vegas now warrant comment."

"Hush." She chided him, slapping him good-naturedly on the arm as Greg and Morgan broke into the pizza boxes, exclaiming in delight at their contents, "This was weird for Vegas, _believe _me." She told him,

"What was it?" Greg asked, indulging her as they all dived in to the pizzas,

"Someone I've never seen before in the reception area, asking for Sara." Catherine said conspiratorially.

"Really?" Greg said, mockingly, "I tell you Cath, the legendary grapevine in this lab has _withered _since your departure."

"Shut up." She told him with a grin, "You two know anything about that?" she asked,

"Possibly...Possibly not..." Nick replied, infuriatingly,

"Who was it? What did they look like?" Greg asked, taking pity on her as her eyes bulged and he sensed Nick to be in imminent danger of being throttled by a mad, pizza-wielding FBI agent.

"A woman, older than me, brown hair and eyes, slim, and the weird part was, I felt like I knew her, though I'm sure I've never met her before..." she said, pensively,

Nick and Greg exchanged a significant look before Greg put her out of her misery saying casually, "I think you may have run into the elusive Mama Sidle..."

"What?" Catherine gasped, eyes streaming as she choked on a piece of pineapple she had inhaled.

"Yeah, she showed up a couple of days ago with information on the investigation, we had no idea who she was until Sara said..."

"Like mother like daughter apparently..." Catherine muttered, quietly, "Sara never mentioned her; I just assumed that she was dead...What about her father?"

"He is dead..." Nick said, grimly,

"What?" Catherine said, eyes narrowed, "What do you all know that I don't?" she asked,

"Sara hasn't told you?"

"No, she's been a little too busy dealing with psychotic, homicidal maniacs to sit me down over tea, _what _Nicky?"

Nick took a deep breath before deciding that Catherine had a right to know and saying quietly, "You know Sara was in foster care?"

"Yes Nick, I'm asking for something I _don't _know." She said, pointedly,

"She never told you why she ended up there?"

"No...Nick-"

" She was put into foster care after her mother murdered her father when she was twelve, he had abused both of them for years, her mother plead insanity and ended up in a mental institute, she didn't have any contact with Sara again until she was nineteen..."

"Jesus..." Catherine breathed, "I knew that she was hit hard by cases involving domestic abuse but...God I thought, I don't know what I thought but not this...I'll never understand how a parent can do that to a child, least of all their own..." she murmured,

"I know..." Nick murmured, as Greg nodded in agreement,

"She's having a Hell of a week isn't she?" Catherine said, shaking her head...

"Tell me about it."

They were quiet for a moment, enjoying one another's company until Morgan said, "Anyone seen DB?"

"I met him outside as I was coming in; don't know what he was doing but he said he'd only be a second." Catherine told them,

"I'll go and find him..." Greg offered, making to stand up,

"No, it's OK Greg I'll go." Finn offered, "I'm nearly done anyway..."

...

Finn moved quietly outside to join Russell, he had been a difficult man to find, and now she knew why, standing in a deserted courtyard, watching as the last remnants of a little fire burnt themselves into ash.

"Everyone's missing you inside..." she said, quietly, coming up to join him,

"Yeah, yeah I'll be in in a second, just give me one minute..." he said, distractedly,

"OK..." she said, quietly, turning to leave before finding that she could not let this lie, "What are you doing DB?" she murmured, softly,

"I'm just tidying up some loose ends Jules, nothing you need to worry about."

She was so worried that she did not react to his use of her first name, abbreviated at that, "I do worry...I worry when I catch you outside burning what looks like evidence, what's going on? Are you OK?"

"No, no I'm not 'OK'." He snapped, "A woman I care about, a lot, has lost more than she ever believed to be possible a week ago, and everyone's just moving on and pretending that it hasn't happened, it's not right..."

"Maybe, maybe not, but it's what she wants..." she told him quietly,

"I don't think any of this has been about what she wants...As these things so often do, this stopped being about the victim a long time ago, and what justice can we offer her for what she's been through?"

"Hannah's dead, she's paid the ultimate price for what she's done..." Finn said,

"That's not good enough Jules, it's not good enough!" he snarled, "She didn't pay the ultimate price, Sara did, there are worse things in this world than dying, dying is easy, living in Hell is hard, and God knows Sara's been through Hell these last few days..."

"She has, but she's still here, she's still fighting, you can't give up on her now..."

"I've not, believe me I've not, she's incredible...She's seen her husband executed, she's had to talk down his psychotic killer, sit by his hospital bed and think she had seen him die despite everything that she's done...She was _raped _less than a week ago and she's just..."

"I know I know...But there's nothing more we can do, the bastard that did that to her is dead too, come to think of it, we never really said who killed him, they're probably dead too..." Finn said, softly, thinking about this properly for this first time,

"Maybe...But the truth died with him..." Russell replied, grimly, his tone frightened her more than his words,

"What are you saying?" she asked mouth very dry.

"What do you think Jules? Why do you think I'm out here hiding away and burning evidence?" he breathed, "She's been through enough, she doesn't deserve this on top of everything else..."

...

"Hey Doc..." Sara murmured, quietly pushing the door open into the autopsy room, smiling at the sight of the coroner, the constant in this crazy lab, never questioned, always there for them, always with answers...

"Sara." He said, he sounded slightly surprised but as a testament to their friendship did not proceed to interrogate her, "What can I do for you Ms Sidle?" he asked, making her smile and laugh softly at the ridiculous _normality _of it all.

"Do you still have Taylor Wynard's body?" she asked softly,

"I do." He said, gravely, "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure..." she said, after only a moment's hesitation.

He paused before saying, "Drawer three..." he then instinctively left her alone, something she was infinitely grateful for.

Her mother's words began running through her head. She had been in a state when she had remembered, when she no longer had to guess and try and force pieces of memory that didn't even exist together to form something that she could call truth. Now she knew, and that, more than anything else, had almost destroyed her in this past week.

It was not something her mother had been expecting to have to deal with when she had arrived at her apartment with a tin of soup. Still she had dealt with it, fairly well overall.

"I didn't have a choice..." she had wheezed, shaking on the bedroom floor, something she had done more in these past few days than she had in her entire life,

"I know..."

"How do you know?" she had spluttered, eyes streaming, feeling acidic bile at the back of her throat,

"I've been where you've been."

"It's completely different..." she had snapped,

"Yes...And no, in some ways it's the same, and in some ways it's not, but whatever, there's no use hanging yourself over it, that won't help anyone..."

"I should be punished for this..." she had rasped, hoarsely,

"You have been..." she had said, softly, "You need to closure, and you need to move on, for the sake of the people who love you if nothing else..."

And so here she was, 'getting closure' and 'moving on'. She wasn't sure what she expected to think, what she expected to feel as she moved towards the rows of drawers, their macabre contents only just being visible. Though she would never have admitted it, even after all the time on the job, in this crime lab, the sight still sent shivers up her spine.

She pulled out drawer 3, braced herself, and slid back the sheet covering his face.

Nothing.

She felt nothing, no hatred, no fear, no anger, no guilt or horror or shock, nothing...She stared down at him and thought of what he had done to her, what he had done to his sister, and the nameless women he had raped and terrified into silence, forcing them to live as she had done without the luxury of knowing that he could never hurt them again, could never come back, could never hurt them again, as he had tried to do with her...She knew _exactly _what he had done, the sleazy bastard had decided to try and help himself a second time...She shuddered, suppressing the memories and the urge to be sick as she stared at him.

Before slamming the drawer back into the belly of the shelf so she would never have to look at the monster again she breathed, shakily,

"I'm not sorry...You _deserved _it..."

**End.**

A/N: First of all I apologise for the gap between this and my last chapter, I had always intended this to be the ending but after everything that went before that I _didn't _expect I found this almost impossible to write, hopefully it was worth the wait but I'm not entirely sure. A lot of this was thoughts and emotions and even, dare I say it, a little bit of romance, none of the things I'm known for and definitely not in my comfort zone so hopefully it wasn't too much of a disappointment and hopefully the little twist at the end fit, I think it did and it was my intention from the outset but who knows!

Anyway, thank you to all of my readers for managing to get to the end of this and a huge thank you to all of my reviewers who convinced me to finish the damn thing! I'll be really interested to see how the show plays it out, probably nothing like mine, but possibly for good reason, in the meantime, here's my take on it. I may write another story off the back of this one and see where it goes because I need to keep writing so hopefully you'll keep an eye out for that one, although if this last chapter is anything to judge my writing on maybe not! One last thank you to you all, see you if we all manage to survive this next episode...


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